welcome my name isn't a sherman and i am your host and our show today is about the penn east pipeline and i suspect everyone's heard about it but i'm going to just read a few things so twenty four townships  pennsylvania and new jersey have passed resolutions opposing the penney's pipeline the pipeline if approved by ferg would cut a one hundred twenty five foot swath of permanent devastation for one hundred fourteen miles the effects of the pipeline would be devastating environmentally the proposed route would cross eighty eight waterways along with the risk to wild and scenic delaware the project is proposed across forty four wetlands thirty parks  etc we can go on and i'm sure there's another point of view if you go on penny's the pipeline website they have a different point of view but my guests today are jim dougan who is an attorney at and a partner  stark and stark law firm so welcome to him thank you and jacqueline evans who is a homeowner activist part of an organization called halt or homeowners against land taking welcome thank ok so tim i'm going to start with you what you are you live in this county and you are impacted by all of this and you have a vested interest so what do we need to know in terms of why you're doing this and then what do we need to don't legally sure thank you well first i do represent a number of property owners who are against the pennies pipe represent them in litigating how much they have to pay for the property rights they take ok so i want to understand the process so first federal energy regulatory commission so they are the ones who have to approve the pipeline is the approval yep finally now it's not ok so right now it's still down before for they're looking at their environmental impact study a deadline has been extended to april if everything goes according to penny schedule they're hoping to have approval in the next couple months by the summer now is it legal for people from penn east to come on your property now and survey no i mean they've done that they we believe yes we believe there has been cases of trespassing for full disclosure i did represent hope and go before the spear court in the jersey and seek an injunction against the trespass we believe since that period forward penney's this put on notice that pretty much everybody who is not granted the survey rights are not going to so we have a number of clients that we advised to represent it and explain to them that they did not have to allow anybody to come on and survey the property and we recommend it be proactive and actually send out a letter saying we do not want you to survey our property please stay off my property if you find somebody on your property do what everyone else does call the police and make a record of it which is very useful to know because i think people you know kind of have this attitude in a lot of situation of this david and goliath battle and you know there's nothing i can do but there is something you can do just even if it's writing a letter it is very important because i don't know how many pipeline to face the organized opposition that jackie's group has been able to put together with all the minutes a pallet he's all the you know reaching out to the politicians and getting attorneys involved to file objections and educating people on what what they have to what they can do to participate even at a small level by saying no you cannot serve me my property means they may not be able to complete their application to new jersey department of our mental protection without that permit the shovel doesn't go in the ground so these little bits added together are extremely important and i think people need to hear that yes jackie yes so talk to me about hall and figure out what we were going to do to fight this and what we found was that the majority the vast majority of the people that are on this route oppose it and you know seventy percent will not let them on their land so we organized and as tim said we  as landowners you know everybody's got to make a choice but we're you know supportive of the landowners that really want to resist this that starts how we've really in my opinion delayed this project there's been three studies and they don't have that information so they put that permit in front of the d p it's incomplete so you know this is so what do you tell people here's here's an action plan game plan what do they need to do well if they're going to fight this they don't want it on their property to the end and that means you know writing letters saying i will not cooperate with you i will not let you on my life writing letters and posting your property  strong in our group support factor of just not feeling like you're alone too and providing information about dates and what to expect and you know this is this is not  thin skinned for sure you have to be invested in the long haul and it's in and i think that what we're finding with the homeowners is that everybody there's a almost a consensus of this is a moral obligation not just for our own interests but to our communities because we're afraid of arsenic getting in our water which is we live in a hotbed in the united states for arsenic and you know they want to just it's just the construction alone is a concern but this this is you know we're not ok with them putting arsenic in our wells in our aquaphor so it's so we feel like it's beyond our properties and it's about our history this is you know where you know somebody wants to take away from you it's a reason to get mobilized and i think the interesting thing is that i read that you know they're saying oh we're going to expand and you know give you access to more natural gas and the studies have shown that we don't need it and so clearly it's just a financial thing so i want to ask you to him so eminent domain what what would it take for them to declare eminent domain does f first give them the permit or the ok yes so it's a little bit technical but once they go through the entire first process and they get the required certificate and permission they're now they now have the power  to me and at that point it's very difficult to challenge the taking this is a federal law if you do not sell they file a lawsuit against you in federal court and it's very important that lawsuit is they're not suing you for anything what they're doing is just suing to have the court agree they can put the pipeline in and how much they have to sell you so if you decide not to settle with them and they sue you you still have a right to fight how much they have to pay you and i represent to know and i represent people if there's no downside you're not evil victim you know ensued it's just how much do they have to pay you sometimes they slip up and you can have challenges to the taking but once they get through the system it's very difficult to try to challenge a pipeline taking and then it turns into how much they have to pay you so you and i were talking before the show about this hole so for is a federal agency that is presumably designed to look at all the facts and then give permission where permission makes sense but they operate from what i understand in such a way that it makes it difficult for takes so again my question is why is a government agency on the one side or another as opposed to here are the facts they will tell you they are here is the facts we're a neutral body that makes a decision i don't believe property owners and advocates believe it's a level playing field for various agencies that are not level playing fields and this is one of them  however that those are the rules that congress set up now there are some challenges to it the there is a group out of the thing to georgetown law clinic with the riverkeeper network that has filed a complaint in district court challenging that inherent conflict which is if firk is the regulatory body that has the overseeing approve these but they're getting funded from fees from the pipeline company is that inherent conflict resulting in a bias which results in the approval of the pipeline that's working its way through the so that it's failing through us that's still in process i have no idea how it's going to come out but there are other agencies that have the same this is the same predicament which is they're funded with with fees and that's sort of how congress set it up as opposed to the taxpayers paying the full bill you can't have a partially funded or fully funded through some of these fees and then i think that the majority of people would believe that that creates a bias and not a  and it's a they've only refused one and that was after the lawsuit from the riverkeeper network so historically they have rubber stamped every project so i have a question for you jackie about  able to start work in new jersey until the d p says you're proving you're approved even if they have further ok yeah so so we so they state they have indicated that they will not allow a shovel to go on the ground until they're going to hold them to the strictest standards until every surveys done and every studies done in season so right now they're really behind and this is good news for us because you know this that's important to us but not every state's d p is protecting their state like the new jersey d p is we've been very encouraged by that and you know every governor hopeful has spoken out against the pipeline we have congressman lance and senator booker also so it's the political tide i feel like it's really changing and we're getting a lot of support in the d p that's very encouraging that they are doing that so what should we be doing well for my clients that really want to get active i encourage them to participate in organizations like call the organize they do need fund raising they disseminate very good information and there is power in groups you get that positive reinforcement there are people that do want to negotiate and sell their their easement rights and it's nothing wrong with that either you know people have to decide what's best for them but i do think they need to remember that if they're against it and they don't want it they don't have to participate they choose to do so stuff the other thing is you know it's kind of an unanswerable question really but i'm going to ask it anyway why are we looking at other pipelines instead of alternatives y it's it's a very difficult political question cultural question we've grown up with cheap gas and oil generally and we don't have the culture of looking to these alternative fuels you know twenty years ago you know putting on a seatbelt smoke a cigarette or throwing a can as we were kids we didn't care about it you know if there's a seven year old around and you have a can of god forbid you know put it in the the recycling that we all over here you don't click your seatbelt that's what they came up with so i think as more and more people look to these alternative sources and get used to it i think it will prefer but it's difficult right now to get that momentum in the united states unless it's built into new construction it's just it's i think it comes down to i think also people don't financial sense of urgency first of all because we're we're doing ok and we're surviving people have so much to deal with in their lives that unless it directly impacts and what could be impacting you it's kind of hard to get mobilized but or to think about future generations however i think can at least i feel like in the state of new jersey in my communities in people doing geothermal and solar for quite some time i was looking into it when this came to my property so i think that there are a lot of people that are interested and like you said you know when something like this happens to you realize wow there are many different ways that we can get energy so we want to water you know so and in the end you put this through there's no putting it back but i do think that there is a growing trend in that and i think it is threatening the gas industry and they want to make as much money as they can before you know that their new wells are offering more jobs to do so i think that that is that that is where we're going and it's a threat to the to the gas industry and i think that's why we're seeing so many pipelines and infrastructure being thought i listen to somebody talking about this some specialist who in terms of inspection of pipelines etc and i think it was him who said that pipeline ruptures and leaks are not that infrequent and i don't think people are fully aware of that can i just tell you something i have a friend jerry and she lives in delaware township and the pipeline route goes wants to go under i think it's five pipelines on her property and she has a horse farm there is a pipeline a spectra pipeline it's the same pipeline that blew up and pennsylvania but it comes through into new jersey in the compressor station in lambertville and then on to her property it's been vibrating sense i think it's august and it was for a while we called all the numbers nobody knows what to do the idea of pipeline safety is to us just doesn't seem to exist because you know how to talk to people from spectra they send somebody out two weeks later than they say they're going to fix or repair and two months and then they send a letter saying we're going to send somebody out to measure how far your buildings are away as they were thinking what in case it blows that you have some number and then and now they're out surveying and they're still they're still not doing anything but they're serving in the direction of the pennies pipeline they're part of the pennies pipeline company this is they they're not doing anything and her in that pipeline vibrating and it was worked on four years ago i had a pig go through and look at the inside of it has the same history as the other side of it that blew up in pennsylvania it's very concerning and we don't believe when they tell us that they care about our safety because we don't see it from this instance at all and i think that you know there's there just isn't hit or miss there are some that are pretty decent about it but mostly it's built and of yeah you're on your own yeah that's what you see that's how we feel you know just from from that example and that just happens to happen while we're going through this fight so yeah and if they you know they do the h d d there's what is that that's when they they drill underneath they propose to drill underneath but we found with  lighting line here in princeton they couldn't get through so then they opened trenched instead which that you know that so they'll try and if they can't then they'll just still do the open trenching but so they drew underneath let's say a leak they in the office applications has ten percent leakage is is fine so so if it's going underneath you can't you can't inspect it you can't fix it and they're there are kind of living on the so it was a question that came up as you were talking and it's my mind so tim what would you say not only to the people who are being impacted directly by this but how do you create a sense of urgency in the community in general he's just educating people what the impact is so if it's not on your property but it's off your property and there's a wooded area and it comes through and they you know they clear club cut to put down a trench that's coming through your property i live out in lambertville you know as they build it if they build it in the summer you have a lot of tourists you can have trucks coming through are going to need staging grounds may not be on your property but ours is cut and the last proposed route was in front of where our water reservoir is and up on a hill where we already have flooding issues and pounce periodically so people left to sort of understand what's the big picture going on here because if it's not going in my backyard but it's a mile away it still can impact on the so i do think a lot of the towns have town hall meetings they've had meetings i've been to some of them  i thought the presentations were great people were able to come up and share their own ideas and it's not just the lynch mob with pitchforks there's some really good communication people can get involved but really understand how it's impact town in my area because you know my future and my future you can say well it's you know it's on you know jackie's backyard not tens backyard i don't worry about it when you know i have three daughters we swim in the delaware we know we have a lot of fun is going under the delaware so these are things that are going to have an impact i think you have to even if it's not your property you have to go out and figure out what's going on what could i do and how could i get involved if i don't like this or i just think we should go to alternative energy or to go to the freedom of other organizations you know i think part of the western mentality is we don't think far into the future it's in the moment if we fix it then we'll deal with whatever problems show up so it's not like you know seven generations ahead has that what's the impact so one of the things is that penny's talks about it is oh it'll create jobs and as soon as people hear that it's like it's all it's an instant buy in you know all they're going to create jobs must be good but create jobs to do what to do poison you know your neighborhood or and are those jobs going to be permanent and how many and for how long so what do you say about the whole job think we're going to create jobs well it's not true they first of all when they come and trespass with surveyors they're from louisiana and arkansas we have surveyors here they are the jobs that they're bringing they're not bringing them to new jersey they're using people from other unions from other states it's going to be less than two hundred jobs and the permanent i think they said was twelve or something like that is so it's the job the job factor is just not there and so that just kind of young screen and you know and people also need to understand  talking i was just thinking you know that it's you know is it it's not in my backyard you know halt is not nimby group we're not trying to push it we this is wrong we don't care but there is no the only alternative turnit have to this project is that it just doesn't exist because it's not needed and it's going to bring so much harm but you know i'm in incineration his own with my three children and my neighbors around me should this blow and they do blow up then there is then there's also with i do feel like i need to say this you know you signed if you sign a deal with them and this project doesn't go through they still have an easement on your property if you go through eminent domain it's only that gas pipeline that is allowed and if the project stead you know we'd like to explore being able to lift that easement off through a fragile court since it's forced on you i don't know if it's possible but it's worth a try but i would that's personally like you know you need to consider all these things when you're thinking about this project and so we have two minutes left him last words of wisdom or advice that i think it's you know get involved sta top of it and know your rights if you decide you want to sell that your own decision but if you don't you you have to understand your rights and stand up and be strong and that's why i think these groups are great because you get that support you know no you can't come on a survey you're going to get persistent negotiators and these are not bad people this is their job and they're very good at it but they will call you when they will put pressure on you to sell if the answer is no it's no and then move on if they persist then either reach out to a lawyer or send a letter to complain about the overreaching but you know know your rights yeah and he last well i just i think that that it's a very traumatic thing to have to live through this and it takes time from our families away that will never get back but i think that there's so much support and people need to stay strong and halt is there for anyone that that needs information and you know guidance and support and we're working for everyone on that and i think people need to understand that this could be them maybe not today just but somewhere in the near future that's right and to even if just to watch your process and get a feel for what they should be doing when it inevitably happens to a lot of you know so thank you thank you being thank you for having you for what you're doing and keep us posted ok thank you thank you my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining us