At a public meeting held by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Monday night, several residents of the Princeton Ridge and experts hired by the citizens’ group Princeton Ridge Coalition aired concerns about methods the Williams Transco company plans to use in construction of a natural gas pipeline through the area.

In a packed meeting room at the Nassau Inn, DEP representatives listened as members of the public expressed their worries about effects of the project. Williams Transco wants to add a 42-inch-diameter pipeline to an existing line as part of a 30-mile installation through Mercer, Somerset, and Hunterdon counties and counties in Pennsylvania. The Princeton section, part of the 6.36-mile Skillman Loop, is an environmentally sensitive area of boulders, bedrock, and wetlands.

Williams Transco won federal approval for the project last December, but the company still needs freshwater wetland and flood hazard area permits from the state. While the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ruled that the pipeline would pose “no significant impact” on the surrounding community, many people think otherwise.

“We have been deeply concerned about the safety risk to our residents and the environmental damage to our pristine woods, streams, and wetlands posed by this expansion project,” Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert said in a statement to the DEP. “Й The impacts identified by Williams Transco in their permit application provide ample evidence that the proposed activity is inconsistent with the objectives of New Jersey’s water quality standards for anti-degradation waters, which are designed to protect the existing quality of New Jersey’s surface waters.”

Rick Reilly, from the DEP, said the public has until Tuesday, March 10 to submit comments in writing. In a brief presentation before the public comment, Williams Transco representative John Todd said that the proposed pipeline would transport gas to produce enough energy to heat about two million homes.

Princeton University astrophysics professor Rob Goldston, a member of the Coalition, said that Williams Transco’s plan to use heavy equipment and do open trenching across the boulders and bedrock of the Ridge is not safe. Instead, he recommended horizontal directional drilling (HDD) under the Ridge, which is safer and would not involve cutting down any trees. “Williams says they can’t do HDD,” he said, “but we disagree. We want the DEP to do an investigation. This is a viable alternative.”

Coalition member Adam Irgom said that no part of Williams Transco’s project is more environmentally sensitive than the Princeton Ridge. “By law, they cannot trench through the wetlands, because there are practical alternatives,” he said. Mr. Irgom added that Williams Transco would rather pay a fine and settle any lawsuits that could be a result of accidents along the pipeline than pay for horizontal drilling. “It’s cheaper and faster to pay fines than drill under the Ridge,” he said. “A $1 million fine on a $165 million project would be a drop in the bucket for them.”

Resident Patricia Shanley, an ecologist who has worked in the Brazilian Amazon, said that the forest on the Ridge is unique. “There is an intelligence in the landscape, and that’s why so many people are here,” she said, also noting the diversity of species. “We need to be extra careful because water is the foundation of life.”

Coalition member Barbara Blumenthal told the DEP that Williams Transco has indicated that if the DEP doesn’t act quickly to approve the project, the company will change its plan to take the existing pipeline out of service during the most intrusive methods of construction, a period of three to six weeks. The plan was to remove the gas and replace it with water during that period.

But the company has indicated it will go back to FERC and ask to leave the gas intact, relocating residents during the construction instead of replacing the gas with water and having residents remain in their homes. “Our response is that we’re not responsible for the timing of the DEP permits,” Ms. Blumenthal said, citing delays in the approval process caused by the company itself.

The Coalition last week sent a letter to DEP Commissioner Bob Martin making the agency aware that Williams Transco “has presented easement holders on the Princeton Ridge with a side agreement.

“The rock handling and construction plans approved by FERC were the result of lengthy negotiations with citizens of New Jersey seeking to minimize environmental damage and ensure public safety, both required under NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act),” the letter reads. “Transco now suggests that these critical concessions will be abrogated if NJDEP does not somehow accelerate the process for issuing permits. The implication to us is that to preserve the concessions Transco has already made, we should not exercise our rights as citizens by testifying before you in the NJDEP permitting process about the numerous shortcomings of the current applications.”

The letter concludes with a request that any approvals of federal permits the DEP makes for Williams Transco should honor commitments the company made last June and October. “Unfortunately, this request is made necessary by the threat to protected environmental assets and public safety that inheres in Transco’s requested easement side agreements, and by the clear implication that Transco may attempt in the future to use another excuse to renege on these commitments to the environment and public safety,” the letter reads.