Durham Township supervisors said Thursday they would issue a letter listing a number of environmental concerns about the proposed Penn East natural gas pipeline.
The supervisors stressed they didn't want to be on the record opposing the $1 billion pipeline, which would pass through Durham, Bucks County, on a 108-mile route stretching from Luzerne County to the Trenton, N.J., area.
"We have to remain neutral or at least non-confrontational," board Chairman Bartley Millett said of the letter, which will be sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the gas companies that make up PennEast, and local legislators.
The township's rationale for their position, as argued by Millett and Supervisor Richard Johnson over the course of a 90-minute meeting, is that PennEast will be more inclined to listen to Durham's concerns if they don't publicly oppose the pipeline. They fear Durham would be lumped in with more vocal opposition to the project.
"'All these townships are on the record. We don't need to hear from them because they're opposed to it,'" Millett said, describing how he pictured PennEast's argument.
Among the concerns mentioned in the letter: the disruption of local wetlands and waterways such as the Cooks Creek, as well as the need to protect preserved lands.
Some residents worried a letter wasn't enough.
Durham resident Timm Ayers wondered why the township hadn't passed a resolution, something a number of other potential pipeline communities -- including nearby Riegelsville -- had done.
"It doesn't disappear like a letter, and it has the whole township behind it," he said. "It gives us a much bigger foot to stand on."
Others worried the township wasn't moving quickly enough.
"We're not jumping up and down," said resident Kathy Gentner. "We're rationale. We've done our homework and time is of the essence."
The supervisors said the process won't end with the letter, which they hope to get a response to by the first week of January.
"We're not just country bumpkins who are going to sit here and get rolled over by PennEast," Millett said. "This is a jumping off point."
And Johnson said the township has years of historical environmental and geological information on its side when the time does come to meet with the gas company.
"We're not just going to talk to the PR people," he said. "We're going to have data."
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