In a contentious public meeting marked by accusations of dishonesty and promises of profit, backers and foes of a proposed high-pressure pipeline in Swancreek Township might have found something to talk about.
“This is my Christmas present to you,” said NEXUS pipeline foe Liz Athaide-Victor, plopping a stapled-together copy of a map onto a conference table in front of Arthur Diestel, spokesman for the company planning the pipeline. The map contained a proposal for an alternate route through Swancreek Township and surrounding townships for the NEXUS high-pressure transport pipeline.
“That’s the sort of great Dec. 15 feedback we’re looking for,” Diestel told her in front of about 80 people crowded into the Swancreek Township building in Delta.
The map is a compromise of sorts, considering the pipeline opponents had already received backing from Swancreek Township trustees in the form of a Dec. 8 resolution opposing the passage of the pipeline through the township at all.
NEXUS is a proposed 42-inch, 2-billion-cubic-feet-a-day pipeline meant to link the Marcellus and Utica shale fields in southeast Ohio to the natural-gas pipeline grid in southeast Michigan and Ontario, Canada. Spectra Energy Corp. and Detroit-based DTE Energy are the lead developers on the project.
Spectra promises a safe, environmentally friendly pipeline that will provide jobs and other economic benefits to the areas through which the pipeline passes, but opposition groups aren’t buying that. They cite safety concerns, both about the high-pressure pipeline itself and from the natural gas it would carry.
The group Athaide-Victor represents, Neighbors against NEXUS, has argued for the pipeline to be relocated within an alternative “energy transmission corridor” established through a sparsely populated area and in which any pipelines could be more easily monitored for safety.
One suggested route is the already established path of the ET Rover pipeline through northwestern Fulton County. However, Diestel and others note that the “study corridor” proposed by NEXUS already follows the route of a high-tension electric line north and south through the township, making that an “energy transmission corridor.”
The Neighbors’ alternative corridor would swing west about two and a half miles, crossing the Ohio Turnpike before angling northeast, running through the hamlet of Ai, to rejoin the original NEXUS study corridor. A second alternative loop proposed by the Neighbors would swing south of, instead of north of, the village of Neapolis in Providence Township.
Diestel said the study corridor is only a starting point, and the final route could shift before the pipeline begins operation in late 2017.
Fernando Mora, who owns Johnston Fruit Farm in Swancreek Township, said it would take time for his operation to recover from a pipeline going through it.
Diestel attempted to reassure Mora that crop planting could begin almost immediately after the pipeline was buried and the land filled in, but Mora responded: “Sir, I don’t know if you know anything about orchards, but these are trees.”
Trees would not be allowed to be planted above the pipeline, according to the land-use restrictions provided by the company.
Not everyone there was in opposition, however.
Brett LaFaso, business representative for Local 18 of the International Union of Operating Engineers in Toledo, said the pipeline will mean jobs, and the gas it carries will mean “more energy, and the cheaper it gets, the more jobs [it will bring].”
“This energy will benefit us, if not this generation, then the next. Ultimately this is about people who want to work hard and pay their own way,” he said.
In answer to a challenge from another audience member, LaFaso said there’s a pipeline within 1,500 feet of his home on Jeffers Road.
