Chester County Residents Weary Of Pipelines Still Call For Mariner East Pipeline Halt

CHESTER COUNTY, PA — An activist floated quietly behind Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro as he announced charges Tuesday against Energy Transfer Sunoco in a news conference at the side of Marsh Creek Lake in Chester County.

"Pull the permits before the next disaster," the sign read, in full view of media cameras, and with hand-drawn flames rising up around the text. The same protester swapped out signs to also display one that said, "You shouldn't be able to pay to pollute."

They are messages residents in Chester County have been harping on and bringing before authorities for as long as Energy Transfer has been in their neighborhoods and state parks, leaving messes behind. Last month, residents flooded a Chester County Commissioners' meeting with the message that "relying on luck" was not enough as they lived alongside pipeline construction, where drilling happens within feet of other, older, pipelines carrying volatile substances.

The lines in question are Energy Transfer's Mariner East 1 8-inch and 12-inch natural gas liquid pipelines. Both pipelines have been in the ground for about 80 years but only began carrying natural gas liquids (NGLs) under high pressure much more recently. A PUC document explained Mariner East 1 is used to transport liquid propane, butane, and ethane.

Just days before Hurricane Ida tracked through Chester County early in September and created a federally declared disaster, County residents had insisted government here needed to prepare for possible emergencies related to the Mariner East pipelines.

After a summer of many sinkholes, residents gathered at the end of August to urge Chester County Commissioners to expedite the emergency action plans they'd set in action a month earlier. At the request of the Chester County Commissioners, the Chester County Department of Emergency Services in August prepared for proposals that would develop and add to the Chester County Emergency Operations Plan a natural gas liquids pipeline hazard-specific addition

The related Request For Proposal also calls for the development of tools to better prepare the public for a potential emergency arising from either the Energy Transfer Mariner East Pipeline or the Enterprise Products TEPPCO Pipeline, the Commissioners' Office said on Aug. 16.

Real Danger, Real Damage Alleged By Grand Jury

The dangers these and other Pennsylvania residents have been railing on are real, according to a federal Grand Jury whose 18-month investigation yield criminal charges this week against Energy Transfer-Sunoco. The Attorney General announced 48 environmental crimes charges against the company on Tuesday.

A Chester County activist group called West Whiteland Residents for Pipeline Safety has documented by video and photo the series of spills, sinkholes, code violations, and other issues happening along the pipeline worksites that cut through Chester County's suburbs and recreational land.

The group was not impressed with the County Board of Commissioners' response to the AG's charges, but continued to call for a complete halt of Mariner East operations.

"Instead of following the AG's strong lead, County Commissioner Marian Moskowitz, County Commissioner Josh Maxwell and County Commissioner Michelle Kichline used Attorney General Josh Shapiro criminal charges announcement to play Pass the Buck," West Whiteland Residents for Pipeline Safety posted on social media the day after the charges were announced and the County responded.

The Commissioners' response said, "Holding Energy Transfer accountable for their actions is long overdue. We are delighted to hear of today’s action by Attorney General Shapiro, announcing 48 criminal charges against Energy Transfer. Energy Transfer has shown itself to be a poor corporate citizen in Chester County throughout the years-long Mariner East 2 pipeline construction period. The disastrous spill into Marsh Creek Lake, which the grand jury determined to be between 21-28 thousand gallons, was one of the most devastating examples of the callousness shown towards our residents and our precious natural resources."

What activists called "passing the buck" came next in the Commissioners' statement. "Now it is the Pennsylvania legislature's turn to take action and enact stronger laws that will protect our citizens and environment. For our part, we will continue to act and advocate with any power we possess to protect and safeguard our citizens."

West Whiteland Residents for Pipeline Safety posted the same day, "Yet again, we call on our Chester County Commissioners to take the action they said three months ago they stood ready to take: File a Petition for Emergency Relief to halt the operation of Mariner East to protect the residents of Chester County. Use the power you possess."

Almost three months ago, the Chester County Board of Commissioners sent an informal letter of complaint to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission asking for action after at least seven sinkholes had formed along Mariner East 1 pipeline across densely populated areas of the County.

"It seems to us that the significant risk of exposing these pipelines makes the potential for a catastrophic leak that much easier to occur and renders the ME1 and 12-inch pipelines 'unreasonable, unsafe and inadequate,'" wrote the County Commissioners in the July 17 letter.

"This is why we are asking that you order operations of the ME1 and 12-inch pipelines be ceased until the Commission can better understand the cause of these sinkholes and the risks that they present to the operation of the operating NGL pipelines," the letter said. Read a Patch report on the Chesco Commissioners' July 17 letter, here.

More sinkholes formed in the weeks following the letter, including new subsistences at the drill site behind Chester County Library Exton. One resident was there to witness a sinkhole drop in the bed of Valley Creek days ago.

'Relying On Luck Not Enough' Is Rallying Cry

The message that "relying on luck is not enough" was communicated in the next meeting. One after another, residents told asked Commissioners to take the action they had promised they would do if the PUC failed to act.

Christina (P.K. Ditty) DiGiulio lives near Marsh Creek State Park and has given statements in public hearing after public hearing on pipeline impact to the area, speaking sometimes as an expert witness. "I am on record asking them months ago to do geophysical studies on their own and then they would have the data to go to the PUC," she told Patch in September.

DiGiulio in August urged the Commissioners to "make the PUC do their dang job." She pointed out that the County's move to create a safety plan is a burden put on communities by Sunoco.

She has grown weary of the delay in action by officials, which she thinks is because it's messy business when development is ongoing. "This pipeline became a problem when it was thrust upon our county and every county — they all have been planning for 20 years what they want and they have been making contracts and deals and setting it up and then this pipeline came through and it became a problem — regulatory wise," DiGiulio said.

"I don't want to see another letter," she said in August. "I'm so sick of letters."

East Goshen Township's Board of Supervisors and its Pipeline Task Force more recently joined Chester County Commissioners in urging the Pennsylvania PUC to use its authority to halt Energy Transfer's Mariner East 1 Natural Gas Liquid (NGL) pipelines until a thorough investigation is completed into the geophysical risks presented by the sinkholes appearing at Mariner East drilling sites, particularly in Exton and West Whiteland Township.

East Goshen Township's Task Force told the PUC that "residents could be irreparably harmed if a catastrophic failure occurred," pointing to the high density of population and the proximity to businesses, homes, and highways.

The County Commissioners have engaged their own independent pipeline engineer and geologist to study the issue, but those experts must rely on only publicly available information. Sunoco has not been forthcoming with information, due to non-disclosure agreements, a County attorney said in a September Commissioners' meeting. So, when the PUC calls for evidence of the problem, he said it's been a challenge for the County.

DiGiulio said, "Regardless, all I know is it's backfiring in all of their faces because they were not intelligent enough to understand the monster that they were dealing with and that monster holds a very dangerous product that is actually harming people all over the place and they’re ignoring that."

Ginny Marcille-Kerslake was present in the same September Chester County Commissioners meeting among the voices calling on the Commissioners to act before a disaster happens.

Marcille-Kerslake said she was standing on the bridge over Valley Creek when the creekbed collapsed late in summer. "No one was monitoring it. It grew to 10 feet as workers poured sand in," she reported. Grout has been poured into sinkholes at the site in recent weeks, the DEP confirmed, but Kerslake pointed out this violates the Clean Streams Act.

DiGiulio said, speaking as a scientist in research and development, "We have to think of everything and the effects of it on people and so I identify quite easily that they do not evaluate the risks in this, at all. ... And when you do not identify the risks you have no ability to mitigate for them and that is where we are."

Residents in Chester County have been call for an end to Sunoco's Mariner East pipeline operations in a September protest that urged Chester County not to "rely on luck."

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