Kentucky Faith Leaders Say No to Pipeline
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
FRANKFORT, Ky. - Faith leaders and environmental advocates delivered petitions bearing more than 36,000 signatures to Gov. Steve Beshear's office on Tuesday, opposing a natural gas liquids pipeline across Kentucky.
The petitions urge Beshear to ban the use of eminent domain to obtain the rights-of-way to build a new pipeline through 13 counties.
"It's a 24-inch pipeline," said Sister Claire McGowan of the Dominican Sisters of Peace in Washington County, who was among those who delivered the petitions. "The substances it will carry are highly hazardous. The likelihood of a spill coming from a leak or a failure of a weld is unacceptably high."
The petition claims the project, known as the Bluegrass Pipeline, threatens to destabilize communities and contaminate drinking water. The developers, Williams and Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, say the claims are exaggerated and that they can use the power of eminent domain to acquire land from property owners.
The plan is to build 180 miles of new pipeline in Kentucky and repurpose another 160 miles to help transport natural gas liquids from the northeastern United States to demand centers on the Gulf Coast.
McGowan said faith is a primary theme of the opposition.
"As people of faith, we feel compelled to protect the land and the water and the communities," she said, "whether they're the communities of people or the other biological communities."
The Sisters of Loretto was the first faith group to mount public opposition to the pipeline earlier this year when the order of nuns rejected the developer's request to survey their land in Marion County.
The petition is online at act.faithfulamerica.org.
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