Week 8

To be honest, as being from Pennsylvania (about 75 miles Northeast of the intended route for the Central Penn Line) and attending school in New England (the Kinder Morgan Pipeline), I know a bit about the situation in Lancaster, less so with the situation in New England as I am more acquainted with the Northeast's attempts at alternative energy such as wind and solar, and having been to that area of the state a few times over the years, I feel I may be a bit biased about anything that occurs within the state.  Also, growing up on a fairly large plot of land, in the middle of the woods nonetheless, I believe that public value of the land is important but not as important as personal value of the land.  Especially when it comes to pipelines and how the maintenance of the pipelines and trails caused by the pipelines will fall upon the owners of the land and how any sort of issues with the pipes (leakage, etc.) could harm the people living on the land.  Also, given that these are privately owned pipelines by companies such as Kinder Morgan and Williams, it has no benefit to the people who privately own the land who wound subsequently have to maintain the land (especially the farmers whose land they plan on cutting through, but Williams has stated that they can just plant on top of the pipelines! No problem!).  So, ideally for companies such as the two aforementioned companies they have the pleasure of not having to maintain anything other than the pipe and if there is no evidence of something like a pipe leak have no need to maintain the area at all, thus the burden of maintenance will fall on the owners of the land.  Specifically with regards to the Central Penn Line that will be running through Lancaster it would be degrading to the land in the area, especially the watershed areas and forests, that would be - in my opinion - detrimental to the area as a whole, especially with the amount of funds that Lancaster has put into land conservation.  Given that the plans will be running through protected lands in the Fishing Creek Nature Preserve could have a huge impact on the quality of the water is considered to be exceptional and has globally rare fish that is only found in the Chesapeake watershed, the Chessie (Chesapeake Logperch) and would break up protected lands in the area.  Then there's the whole other issue of the Central Penn Line attempting to run through Amish-held land, which I'm not going to get into.  Long story short, seizing privately held land, or land that is under conservation, and building a pipeline through it under eminent domain laws, forcing the burden of maintaining the land onto the property owners, subsequently making the land harder to insure and decreasing property values is not something that I agree with - or am comfortable with - on any level from a personal standpoint.

From an engineering standpoint, I do understand the need for expanding the infrastructure of the country to better suit the growing energy needs.  I especially understand the need of avoiding the transport of natural gas via trains given how poorly the rail cars for carrying oil are designed and the oil industries lack of willingness to switch to rail cars that don't explode while carrying crude oil.  However, I do not believe that digging through conserved land and forcing property owners to let pipelines be built through their land is the proper answer, especially with the risks involved of having a pipeline run through the area.  I think, the priority of engineers should be working on improving the quality of the piping, improving the ease of maintenance, along with researching the areas through which the pipes can be run in a way that will have the least effect the environment.  Ideally, though, I do agree with Tim that the best solution would be a decentralized grid with a focus off of fossil fuels, which is something that Nescoe and New England are trying to do with larger sections of wind farms (off shore and on shore), solar, and other alternative energy sources.  I believe that Engineers should be trying to switch away from conventional fossil-fuel dependent energy sources and try to improve alternative energy sources, as we are meant to be trying to help people (in my personal opinion, anyway) and hurting the environment is not a good way to go about doing so.  Unfortunately, given that decentralized grid is unlikely to happen due to big business lobbying in the government, working to improve the pipelines and find the best routes that do not impact conserved land or large patches of people's property should be the top priority of engineers involved with the projects.

Wow, this wound up being longer than I planned on it being, but being from near an area of one of the proposed pipelines I have had a lot of exposure to the discussion previously.