Rail-Trails Council Northeastern Pennsylvania President’s statement from a recent newspaper article on putting a hazardous gas pipeline in the recreational trail system included the following.

Mr. Newsom said he fears that, if it arises, a decision to sign an easement agreement will be a controversial one.

"If we end up with a pipeline running through the right of way, we're going to make some people very happy and some people very unhappy, I suspect," he said.

I am sure I missed some, but what I wrote below, would put me in the “very unhappy” category.

Hundreds of landowners are adjacent to the trail. This would be worse than eminent domain because there would be no compensation. The trail ROW is 66 feet in most places. For a non-profit public entity, funded by taxpayer grants and donations, to even consider this plan amazes me. I would go as far as saying many of their members will oppose this plan.

Even if they have the legal authority to negotiate a pipeline it is not, morally or ethnically, correct for landowners or the communities involved.

If you have a section of the trail adjacent to your land, it would depreciate your land. If a setback distance is ever imposed as part of a building code, it possibly could make it worthless. If you have an existing home near the trail, it would put you at risk of an explosion or fire with no compensation from the pipeline company upfront (or the right to decline putting the pipeline on the land) for taking that risk. (Some homes are as close as 50 feet.)

If you use the trail for any activities, it would put you at a higher risk of injury. (Not only by fire or explosion but running into an above ground marker or pipes that are needed to support any pipeline.)

The trail is not surveyed as to what property the Trails Council actually owns.

Where would the location of the pipeline be in the trail? I would think not in the middle, which would further encroach on the adjacent landowner.

How would existing driveways or other crossings of the rail (bed not necessarily in old railroad deeds) be handled?

How would they insure the toxic ground of the rail bed is treated properly?

Where would the compressor station and other support equipment be stationed? What about the noise ?

How would they compensate you, the landowner, for the reduced property value?

Any new or existing quarry would need to contact the DEP for a safe blasting distance from the pipeline. (No blasting within 200 feet of the pipeline is usually the standard setback.)

A catastrophic failure of the pipeline would devastate land well over a thousand feet from the mainly 60-70 feet the trails Council owns.

So, other than the Trails Council who else would be very happy?

Pipelines are up to each and every landowner in Pennsylvania. There is no eminent domain for a gathering or transmission line. How could a trails council with but a sliver of land force it on us?

Pipeline companies are working in this area with landowners who see it in their best interest to do so. I am pro gas and pro landowner rights.

The Trails Council is doing this all behind closed doors. The trails council has a master list of all the adjacent landowners. They should all be contacted and given the right to express their concerns and get answers. We need to get the details of the plan before it is implemented.

Sincerely,

Stanley Waxmundsky

Harmony, PA

How much gas is under the ground? Ask your friends that get royalty checks and is there a decline over the first year in the amounts and as much as half less by a year's time. And then the following year, further large declines.

Is there a finite amount of gas under our ground that will deplete in a few years?

Here is a quote from an article exploring this:

"The claimed lifetime productivity, or estimated ultimate recovery, of individual wells was also overstated,” Berman found. “The production decline curves modeled by well operators predict that production will fall steeply at first, followed by a long, flattened tail of production. Berman's analysis found a better fit with a model in which production falls steeply for the first 10 to 15 months, followed by a more weakly hyperbolic decline. Shale-gas wells typically pay out over one-half their total lifetime production in the first year. So operators must keep drilling continuously to maintain a flat rate of overall production."

This is taken from a larger article at: http://www.slate.com/. This article explores how much gas is really out there.

Is it worth ripping up our countryside and our inner Earth for a few years of gas? Is it worth the risk of changing our air quality and water quality and environment for the worse to bring up a few years of gas?

There are better, renewable, non-polluting technologies out there for us to pursue, put our focus on, put our money into and develop and make us energy independent and not present environmental risks to our land and health.

Join our local citizens watch group, "Citizens for Clean Water" and check out our local website at www.nepagasaction.org. Network with local residents if you have concerns about gas drilling and it's negative affects and whether you can fully believe multi-national corporations, who are mainly interested in the most profit for their CEO's and shareholders.

There has got to be a better way to be energy independent and have clean, cheap energy for all.

Sincerely,

Vera Scroggins

Brackney, PA

Spin it how you will, Iraq is one of the worst military defeats in American history. And that's saying quite a lot when taken in light of the U.S. unbroken string of humiliating loses: Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Somalia, Pakistan, and Uganda.

Pres. Obama put the best face on the pullout saying that we found a dictatorship and left a democracy. But the purpose of the military is not to build democracies or bequeath freedom for foreign nations. It is to protect the United States of America.

But even by this skewed standard of success, it is a failure. Four days after the American withdrawal from Baghdad the nation is on the cusp of civil war as Sunnis and Shites resume their 1,400-year-old sectarian vendetta.

Afghanistan is our next failure. The incursion called “Enduring Freedom” proves that past experience in nation building is so much excess baggage to be tossed aside. The last two administrations have supported sending our troops into this land-locked nation. There are only two life lanes of support.

One, the northern route - exorbitantly expensive, and two, the southern route through Pakistan and into Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass.

Underscoring America's vulnerability, last November Pakistan closed this vital artery for two weeks cutting off 40 percent of the supplies needed by 100,000 U.S. troops.

Yet even before the Afghan war is added to the failure list, the present and next administration are working on what will be the jewel in the crown of debacles: Iran.

Obama, like the ten presidents who preceded him, is at war with Iran. It is a shadow war of sanctions, supporting dissenting factions, covert actions, cyber warfare, espionage, assassinations, and threats of direct military action.

Obama's opponent in 2012 will probably be Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney. Both promise out-and-out war on Iran unless it gives up trying to make an A-bomb. But there is not the slightest scintilla of evidence supporting this assumption that Iran has a clandestine weapons program. Nevertheless, suspicion is sufficient. They differ only in their degree of pugnacity.

Gingrich: “First, [continue] covert operations, taking out their scientists, breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable.”

He concludes: “If in the end, the dictatorship persists, you have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its capacity to have a nuclear weapon.”

Romney: “I will back up American diplomacy with a very real and very credible military option. I will restore the regular presence of aircraft carrier groups in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf region.”

He goes on: “The United States, acting in concert with allies [Israel], will never permit Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. If you want peace, prepare for war.”

Both hopefuls have promised to go to war against a nation that has neither threatened the U.S. nor poses any credible danger to this land.

But what if - and “what if’s” are always an iffy venture - the future sees this unthinkable war? What then?

Iran will try to block the Strait of Hormuz through which 40 percent of the world's oil passes. This will be countered with the full force of the U.S. and Europe's armed might to keep the crucial shipping lane open. But success is not guaranteed.

The U.S. might be overestimating its power (aggressors usually do) while underestimating Iran's defenses. Consider Iran's capture of the most advanced U.S. spy drone, the RQ-170. Iranian engineers overcame the latest in stealth tech, hacked its controls, and brought it to a controlled landing. This was greeted by the Pentagon with utter disbelief. Yet a video of the intact craft was undeniable proof.

Iran has the S-300, the world's most advanced and effective antiaircraft system, Russian 200-knots/hour torpedoes, Chinese sea mines that rocket up blowing out the hull of a ship; and who knows what other weapons have been made available to Iran by her Russian and Chinese allies? Certainly not the Pentagon.

If the U.S. manages to keep the Strait open, oil futures will double and gas at the pump will go to $8/gal. But if Iran succeeds in closing the Strait, then a bidding war for oil among China, Japan, India, Europe, and the U.S., will take gasoline to $15 to $20/gal. enough to send the world's economies into a tail-spinning depression.

Which leaves us with this choice: Which war party candidate shall we vote for in 2012, a Democrat or a Republican?

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA