PIPELINE TAPS FEARS

Pipeline taps residents' fears

Hundreds worry about a gas line's effect on their land and environment

Friday, November 16, 2007

TED SICKINGER

The Oregonian

A chorus of concerns rang out this week as landowners along the snaking route of a proposed natural gas pipeline showed signs of organizing to oppose the line and liquefied natural gas terminals along the lower Columbia River.

Several hundred landowners, farmers, advocates and concerned residents aired their complaints at public meetings this week in Maupin, Molalla, McMinnville and, on Thursday, Forest Grove. The towns sit along the proposed route of the Palomar pipeline, which would connect a planned LNG terminal near Astoria with an interstate transmission line that runs through central Oregon to California.

Douglas Sipe, a project manager from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, was the man behind the lectern and thus the stand-in punching bag for both his agency and the private companies that want to build the terminal and pipeline.

Most speakers expressed deep misgivings about the agency's ability to deal with associated threats to people, wildlife, farmland and the environment.

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