The Board of Selectmen gave Russell Freedman approval to use the community room at Town Hall for a meeting about the pipeline.

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — The new route of the proposed Kinder Morgan Tennessee Gas Pipeline is eyed to bisect the town along electric lines just north of Town Hall.

 

Kinder Morgan has proposed a expansive pipeline that will carry natural gas from the Marcellus Shale territory in Pennsylvania, through New York and Massachusetts before heading north to Maine. The new route goes through Hancock, Lanesborough, Cheshire, Dalton, Hinsdale, Windsor and Peru.

 

The plan moves away from Lenox, where town meeting passed a non-binding warrant article to oppose it. The new route avoids the wealthier Lenox and Richmond areas, where town officials were prepared to allocate additional funds to fight the proposal in court, and opts to enter the Berkshires through Lanesborough, Hancock and Cheshire before connecting with the rest of the proposed route.

 

The plan in Lanesborough follows electrical rights of way already in place north of Town Hall and south of Bill Laston Memorial Park. The route is essentially a straight line from Hancock to Cheshire. It will impact 19 properties.

 

"It is not really a dramatic construction project because it will be on the right of way for the electric lines," Town Administrator Paul Sieloff said on Monday.

 

Sieloff had talked with the company about the plans and informed the Board of Selectmen that there will be public meetings to discuss the project in the future. And the Selectmen have already been hearing from concerned residents but have had little to tell them because of the newness of the change.

 

"Regardless of where the pipeline is, there will be people opposed from it," Sieloff said. "There is no doubt that it is somewhat controversial. But I think it is important to go through the process, listen to both sides and then the board can take a position."

 

A group of citizens, led by Russell Freedman, is holding an open meeting on Jan. 15, 2015, to discuss the issues with the proposal. The Board of Selectmen approved the use of Town Hall for that session.

 

"This will be free and open to the public ... I think there are a lot of issues with this pipeline," Freedman told the Selectmen.

 

Freedman said Kinder Morgan representatives weren't specifically asked to attend but he reiterated that the meeting is open to the public so officials could attend if they wanted. The Selectmen agreed to inform the company of the 7 p.m. meeting.

 

The proposal is already under federal review and the company has held numerous meetings on the previous route plans. The company says the new pipeline was proposed to meet the energy needs in New England, which have become more dire with the closure of coal and nuclear plants. The New England governors — including Deval Patrick — have agreed that there needs to be fuel to fill the energy gap between now and a renewable economy. Patrick has backtracked on the proposal, saying he feels the Kinder Morgan project "may not be the right one."

 

Gov.-elect Charlie Baker has stated a preference for expanding and updating the current pipeline infrastructure over building over a new route.

 

The current pipelines feed companies like Berkshire Gas. A number of gas companies have said there is a growing demand and there have been recent hikes in utility costs, which many attribute to the supply and demand chain.

 

Opposition to the project has spanned multiple topics from safety, to environmental, to the disruption caused by the construction. Particularly, the use of "fracked gas" has been controversial — so controversial that the state of New York recently banned the practice — because of the environmental concerns.

 

The Marcellus Shale territory is seen as a hot bed of production through the fracking method. 

 

Kinder Morgan doesn't do the production, but rather is hired to simply transport the gas from the producers to the smaller companies. But its methods have been disputed with opponents citing "pigging" and blowoffs at substations as releasing the gas into the environment throughout the line.

 

Lanesborough has now been thrust into the battle with the change of the route. The Selectmen will now delve into the issue but have not currently taken a stand on the matter.