The PennEast pipeline is an unnecessary infrastructure project that will only benefit the companies who own it, and whose costs will be borne by residents in the area. In response to the PennEast threat, we formed HALT PennEast. We are average citizens who have joined forces to stop this pipeline.
To celebrate the end of the PennEast Pipeline the New Jersey Conservation Foundation is organizing a Community Celebration on Sunday Oct. 17th from 3:00 to 5:30PM at the Prallsville Mills. Plan to join us for food truck cuisine, music, and speeches. Homemade desserts are welcome!
We Won! – September 27th, 2021 Decision
U.S. Supreme Court Decision – June 30th, 2021
Our Congressional Representatives are Working With Us to Stop PennEast.
April HALT Update – April 25th, 2021
HALT March Virtual Member Meeting – March 22nd, 2021
February HALT Update – February 12th, 2021
February HALT Update – February 8th, 2021
December HALT Update – December 2nd, 2020
Positive News – September 23rd, 2020
September HALT Update – September 7th, 2020
FERC Deadline Reminder – August 29th, 2020
August HALT Update – August 12th, 2020
Supreme Court Update, NJCF Statement, and Tolling Orders Update— July 1st, 2020
Request for Homeowners to Submit a Comment to FERC–May 5th, 2020
APRIL 2020 NEWSLETTER– April 26th, 2020
HALT’s February 26, 2020 Meeting Summary–March 4th, 2020
An Important Time To Have Our Voices Heard: Move To Intervene By March 4, 2020–February 16th 2020
PennEast Update — January 11th 2020
PennEast Seeks Supreme Court Review–November 19th 2019
Where Things Stand At This Time–November 4th & 5th 2019
NJDEP Denied PennEast’s Submitted Application–Oct 11th 2019
Tell NJDEP to Reject PennEast Now!–September 18th 2019
Putting Together Our Game Plan — August 29th 2019
PennEast Application Resubmitted to NJDEP — August 12th 2019
Meeting Highlights — June 19th 2019
Governor Murphy & NJDEP Deny Permits To Build Contested Pipeline — June 8th 2019
More Uncertainty for PennEast and FERC — March 20th 2019
Please Intervene By March 8, 2019 — February 24th, 2019
Homeowners Claim PennEast Official has Major Conflict of Interest — February 21st 2019
HALT Letter to Attorney General & Hunterdon Freeholders Support — February 2019
Homeowner Update From Judge — January 17th 2019
PennEast Discussions With Lawyers — January 16th 2019
Court Order Entered — January 11th 2019
Keeping directly impacted homeowners informed — February 7th 2018
Confirmed the nominations of FERC Commissioners McIntyre and Glick — November 3rd 2018
HALT & Homeowner’s Legal Actions — 2017
FERC Nominees Are Confirmed — August 3rd 2017
NJDEP Denies PennEast’s Request for a Permit Application Extension! — 2017
These posters are the art work of our Webmaster, Kitty Evans. She created these as a school project but we think they express not only her feelings about living with the threat of the PennEast pipeline but the feelings of many of our HALT landowners.
Take a look if you would like some insight into the day to day impact of this project over the past seven years.
“PennEast faces long road despite supreme court decision” – New Jersey Spotlight
NEW! September 2021 Report To Stakeholders
September 2021 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “PennEast has announced the news that the PennEast pipeline project has
been dropped.”
August 2021 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “PennEast has announced that it will not complete the
acquisition of rights of way ‘for some time.'”
July 2021 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “We follow the money. In its recently released quarterly report, New
Jersey Resources, has downgraded its investment in PennEast…”
June 2021 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in favor of PennEast on Tuesday allowing the pipeline to condemn state-owned property through eminent domain.”
May 2021 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “I’ve heard the following comment more than once: ‘What’s the big deal? The pipeline will be underground. You’ll never know it is there and the pipeline company will pay you!’ So why are we so opposed to this pipeline?“
April 2021 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “A landmark United Nations report is expected to declare that
reducing emissions of methane, the main component of natural
gas, will be a critical step in achieving a near immediate
slowdown in the rate of global warming.”
February 2021 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of PennEast v. New Jersey.”
January 2021 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “The Jan. 19th meeting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
turned into a big setback for PennEast.”
December 2020 Report to Stakeholders
Excerpt: “There are only two remaining permits to be issued by the PA. Dept. of
Environmental Protection (PADEP) for the shortened Pennsylvania-only
PennEast pipeline.”
November 2020 Report to Stakeholders
Excerpt: “The Trump administration is rushing forward on a roll back of bird protections.”
October 2020 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “The PennEast Pipeline project continues to be stalled with no progress in months. The
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has yet to accept the inadequate
Environmental Assessment which was done for the Phase 1 Project…”
September 2020 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “On Sept. 17th , the judge in the Constitution Pipeline eminent domain proceedings ordered
the reversal of condemnation orders…”
August 2020 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “On Sept. 2nd the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) concluded the
opportunity to comment on the Environmental Assessment for the new Phase 1 (PA
only) pipeline project.“
July 2020 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “PA Attorney General Josh Shapiro has issued a Grand Jury Report that concludes that
Pennsylvania regulatory agencies have failed to protect the public from the negative
impacts of fracking for gas.”
June 2020 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “The Supreme Court has finally taken action on the PennEast appeal of the State of New Jersey case. The Court has asked the Solicitor General to submit a brief.“
May 2020 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “The original PennEast pipeline has two important permits that have yet to be granted by the PADEP. The Chapter 102 Permit concerns erosion and sediment control.”
April 2020 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “As reported earlier, on January 30th PennEast filed an application for a new Pennsylvania-only pipeline which they call “Phase I.”
March 2020 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “All local Carbon County governments along the pipeline route and the County government have signed on as intervenors except Kidder Township.”
Febuary 2020 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “PennEast has created a new project that they are calling Phase 1. FERC has accepted the application and granted a new docket number (CP20-47). This is a project to build 68 miles of the original route through PA. This is a PA-only pipeline that follows the originally proposed route but ends in Bethlehem Twp. where it will connect to the Adelphia Gateway Project which is another pipeline project with a separate docket number (CP18-46).”
January 2020 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “As noted in last month’s report, PennEast Pipeline has asked FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) for an extension of two more years in which to get the project operational. FERC has not yet scheduled a hearing on the extension request.“
December 2019 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “Today, the PennEast Pipeline asked FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) for an “extension of time.” […] If they manage to complete the pipeline by 2022, it will be five years behind schedule.“
October 2019 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “Yesterday, the Keystone pipeline leaked an estimated 383,000 gallons (9,120 barrels) of oil into wetlands in North Dakota. The leak is already the eighth-largest pipeline oil spill of the last decade.”
Sept 2019 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “On September 10th, a three-judge panel of the 3rd District Appeals Court, overturned an earlier ruling and upheld the State of New Jersey’s appeal.“
August 2019 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “PennEast resubmitted its application for a certification under the Clean Water Act to the New Jersey DEP on August 8th.“
July 2019 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “Save Carbon County has been approved for a $1,000 Sierra Club grant to help fund our efforts in fighting the pipeline.“
June 2019 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “When we started our efforts to defeat PennEast, we hoped that delays in the project would provide time for the market for gas to plunge.”
April 2019 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “As noted in the March report, PennEast filed for approval of a route change on 2/19/19 and asked for FERC approval of that route change by 7/1/19.”
Mar 2019 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “PennEast filed for important approvals with both the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (PADEP) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) this month.“
Feb 2019 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “According to a reports filed with the PA Dept. of State, pipeline companies have spent more than $37.7 million on lobbying our representatives in Harrisburg.”
January 2019 Report To Stakeholders
Excerpt: “On Dec. 14th, landowners in NJ received a final judgement in their Eminent Domain hearing.”
HALT NJCF Meeting August 2020
HALT NJCF August 2020 from Gary Brackenridge on Vimeo.
“We hope that everyone will share these findings with the public, with your members, and with decision-makers evaluating natural gas pipelines and infrastructure in the Delaware River Basin and beyond. They tell an important story regarding the significant environmental and social costs of these projects, and the horror stories from construction of Mariner East 2 show how real the risks are, and how damaging these projects can be to our water resources, and impacted landowners and communities!”
—Tom Gilbert–Campaign Director for Energy, Climate and Natural Resources, New Jersery Conservation Foundation
To Read the Opinion by Tom Gilbert for the Philadelphia Inquirer (click here)
Opinion Piece by Tom Gilbert, For the Inquirer
Published May 19, 2021
It was newsworthy when South Jersey Industries announced a plan to eventually eliminate its greenhouse gas emissions. But there’s a hitch.
Last month, South Jersey Industries (SJI) — a utility company that serves 700,000 customers — announced that it plans to be carbon neutral by 2040. For proponents of clean energy like me, this should have been an exciting, encouraging development.
But there is a big fly in their clean energy ointment: the proposed PennEast gas pipeline.
Like other utility companies in New Jersey and across the nation, SJI knows that dirty fossil fuels are on the way out. Customers want safe, clean energy sources like wind and solar. Over the next several decades, those sources will replace natural gas and other fossil fuels.
So it was newsworthy when SJI announced a plan to reduce and eventually eliminate its emission of greenhouse gases that worsen the unsafe, unhealthy impacts of climate change.
But the company’s ongoing financial support of the proposed PennEast pipeline undermines the worthy goal they are embracing.
PennEast is a proposed 120-mile natural gas pipeline to transport gas from fracking sites in Eastern Pennsylvania across the Delaware River through towns in Hunterdon and Mercer Counties in New Jersey. SJI has an ownership stake in the project — which could cost roughly $1 billion — and would also be a customer, buying gas from the pipeline to service its own customers.
The project would deliver a billion cubic feet of fracked gas daily, which proponents argue would serve millions of homes, create thousands of jobs, and lower energy bills for customers.
But according to the N.J. Rate Counsel, supply and demand requirements can be met through existing arrangements, even during extreme weather. In other words, PennEast is “a solution in search of a problem” — we don’t need an additional pipeline.
This project would also have detrimental impacts. According to a 2019 report by the Cadmus Group, prepared for the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, it would result in increased emissions of harmful greenhouse gas. The PennEast pipeline could also contaminate public water systems and wells, and disrupt acres of land, resulting in an estimated $43 million loss in ecosystem services. The construction will disturb wildlife and their habitats, including areas critical for many species of birds. A 2017 analysis by Key-Log Economics said the pipeline may also reduce property values by tens of millions of dollars.
Residents from New Jersey municipalities in its path have spoken out opposing PennEast, backed up by elected officials from both parties. The state of New Jersey has blocked key easements on properties in which the state has an interest, including land preserved for conservation, agriculture, or recreation, which the PennEast Pipeline Co. LLC claims is illegal; the case has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments from both sides last month.
By positioning itself as a carbon-neutral company while continuing to support the PennEast pipeline, SJI is essentially going to the store to buy a nicotine patch and a carton of cigarettes. Are you serious about quitting, or not?
SJI wouldn’t be the first company wanting to have it both ways by planting one foot in the future while keeping the other in the past, and seeking an environmentally sensitive public image in the process. When a company misleads the public about its environmental practices, it’s called “greenwashing.”
It would be a lot easier to give SJI credit if the company would “come clean,” literally and figuratively. It’s hypocritical to seek praise for environmental initiatives while seeking to build an unneeded fossil gas pipeline that would increase harmful emissions, potentially damage private and public lands, and threaten critical water and wildlife resources. As laudable as the goal of being carbon neutral by 2040 is, it’s inconsistent with building an environmentally destructive fossil fuel pipeline that would be in operation well beyond that date.
If SJI wants to be a good corporate citizen and as green as its public relations campaign touts, it will give up its interest in the PennEast pipeline.
Tom Gilbert is the campaign director for ReThink Energy NJ, a nonprofit organization that supports a swift transition to clean, efficient, renewable energy.
Access the article from it’s original publication site: The Philadelphia Inquirer
This painting is a response to the threat of the proposed PennEast pipeline. It is a threat to our community, our environment, our agricultural and cultural resources as well as global climate. I call it “The Climate Change Apocalypse.” It depicts how the places we call home, such as the Rosemont Valley, our global home, including Manhattan, and the glaciers and seas will be impacted by climate change if we cannot stop the use of fossil fuels and the proliferative infrastructure it brings.
Our community is fighting to defend our “peaceable kingdom.” This is why we are working together to stop PennEast and climate change before it is too late.
Alix Bacon.
