The Pinelands Commission faces a critical decision – whether to apply its regulations protecting the Forest Management Area of the Pinelands, or to waive those rules so South Jersey Gas can build a natural gas pipeline to serve a power plant on the banks of the Great Egg Harbor.
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South Jersey Gas is proposing to put a 22-mile natural gas pipeline through a portion of the Pinelands Forest Management Area in order to enable the B.L. England Plant at Beesley's Point, right on the Great Egg Harbor River to be retrofitted and greatly expanded. This is a bad place for a power plant in the first place – and it’s a bad place to give new life to a power plant that has virtually shut down for years.
The proposed pipeline violates the Pinelands Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP), which only permits such infrastructure in the Forest Management Area if it is "intended to primarily serve the needs of the Pinelands." N.J.A.C. 7:50-5.23. To the extent it operates at all, the B.L. England plant primarily serves electricity demand outside the Pinelands, where the great majority of residences and businesses in the Atlantic and Cape May County are located. There is no exception for pipes run along or under roads.
This rule was put in the CMP decades ago for good reason: This kind of infrastructure can bring a variety of environmental harms and brings pressure for more development along its route, making harder to sustain the boundaries that keep growth out of the Pinelands’ protected forests. The Pinelands Commission is the agency charged to defend the Pinelands CMP, yet it is in discussions with the Board of Public Utilities (BPU) and South Jersey Gas to waive its restrictions for this project. That would be a bad mistake for several reasons:
First, if the Pinelands Commission doesn’t stand by own its rules, no one else will. Certainly not BPU or South Jersey Gas. When the Commission gives special exceptions for powerful players, it undermines the whole Pinelands protection project and raises the question why anyone should respect its decisions.
Second, approving one pipeline project like this will invite more. The Pinelands was created in part as a response to plans to construct off-shore drilling platforms and run transportation pipes across the Pinelands to refineries on the Delaware River. The drilling did not happen forty years ago, but it may happen in the future. Similarly, proposals for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals along the Jersey shore continue to be pressed, raising the possibility that pipes would be proposed across the Pinelands to transport LNG.
Third, there is no good public-interest reason to make an exception in this case. The proponents are trying to get “green cover” by arguing that natural gas is cleaner than the coal and oil that have fired the B.L. England plant in the past. The argument is seductive, but wrong. This plant has only operated for peak demand for years. Thus, the plant is not needed to operate on a full-time basis at all. When it is changed to natural gas and full operation, it will cause more air pollution than it does now – to say nothing of the environmental and health risks inherent in the production and transport of the gas to this isolated plant.
Finally, there are alternatives to the proposed pipeline route. There are power plants directly to the north in Atlantic County, so it should be possible to run the supply pipeline outside the Pinelands Area or, at least, in the right of way of the Garden State Parkway, where it will not impinge on the interior forests of the Pinelands.
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