Opponents of a natural gas pipeline that is planned to be constructed through several municipalities in Monmouth and Ocean counties have filed a lawsuit against the state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) in a bid to stop construction before it begins.
Jeff Tittel, the chapter director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said the project will benefit New Jersey Natural Gas (NJNG) and not the environment or the general public.
“NJNG says this pipeline is for reliability when in reality, they are asking the ratepayers to pay for a pipeline that will only be used to further development along the coast and will cause environmental destruction along the way,” Tittel said in a press release.
On the other side of the coin, NJNG spokesman Michael Kinney said the company is confident in the approvals it has obtained and that construction of the pipeline that is known as the Southern Reliability Link (SRL) will ultimately be allowed to begin.
“The approval afforded to the SRL was based on facts. We expect those facts to be upheld on appeal,” Kinney said.
In March, the BPU approved the construction of the Southern Reliability Link, which NJNG has described as a high-pressure 30-inch-diameter pipeline that will run from Chesterfield Township in Burlington County to Manchester Township in Ocean County.
Along its route, the pipeline with pass through portions of Upper Freehold Township in Monmouth County, and Plumsted and Jackson in Ocean County, and other municipalities. The pipeline will not be subject to additional hearings and approvals in the communities through which it passes.
NJNG has said the pipeline will “provide supply diversity and system resiliency, supporting the safe, reliable distribution of natural gas to more than one million people.”
Tittel said the lack of an opportunity for members of the public and the governments of affected municipalities to further express their disagreement with NJNG’s plan was a primary reason why the lawsuit was filed.
NJNG has said the SRL would connect a natural gas system that serves customers in Monmouth, Ocean and Burlington counties to a new Transco supply point in Chesterfield. The new pipeline will tie into NJNG’s transmission system in Manchester that is near the southern end of the transmission system.
Lawyers from the Eastern Environmental Law Center have agreed to represent the Sierra Club. Tittel said he hopes to bring the group People Over Pipelines into the lawsuit.
“When environmental assessments and potential health issues are sidelined, the public is not well-served,” said Walter Helfrecht, a representative of People Over Pipelines. “It is our hope this lawsuit … will put the industry in its proper place. We hope it will also put the regulatory agencies on notice that their charters are first and foremost supposed to be for the people and not for-profit exploitation at great cost to the general health and welfare of the people and the environment through which the proposed infrastructure would pass.”
