PennEast opponents plan continued protests against the planned $1.2B gas pipeline. Watch video
DELAWARE TWP. -- Armed with signs, sleigh bells, maracas, kazoos and more, people objecting to the PennEast Pipeline rallied around a hay wagon early Friday evening, chanting and singing a protest song written specially for the occasion.
"These are people from towns up and down the pipeline route, united, because we won't stop the fight," said Patty Cronheim, leader of Hopewell Township Citizens Against the Pipeline.
Cronheim and Alix Bacon, regional manager of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, pulled the protest together early in the day on Friday, following PennEast's formal application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
"Jacquelyn Evans and her children and I created a new banner on Sunday," Bacon said. "Tom Michalenko lent us the hay truck, and when it was all set up I got home on Thursday and found out PennEast had filed."
The gathering started with about 40 people on a field at the corner of Route 523 and Sandy Ridge Road, what they dub the "blast zone." The number grew as passers-by joined in, reaching close to 100 by 6 p.m.
Cronheim, guitar in hand, got the rally started when someone asked her, "What should we sing?"
"We could sing the Pipeline song," Cronheim said, strumming chords and launching into a repetitive chorus: "We don't want the pipeline, no. We don't want the pipeline, no. We don't want the pipeline, no, tell PennEast they've got to go. We don't want the pipeline, no."
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With the group warmed up, speaker after speaker took the microphone Cronheim handed over. Joy Stocke lives just down the road from where the crowd stood, and told the crowd such gatherings were important. "It's easy to say it's not in my back yard," she said, warning that this isn't the only pipeline project pending.
Mary Tolmie, still in her nurse's scrubs, was out by Route 523, pulling in passers-by for the rally. "I'll definitely be in the blast zone, the evacuation zone," she said, "with my horses, organic farm, chickens." She worries that blasting will release arsenic in the bedrock, ruining the retirement as an organic farmer she's been looking forward to in a handful of years.
T.C. Buchanan sported two signs, and said in a side conversation that the pipeline will "take all of our apple and pear trees, half of two hayfields, half of our woodlot, and a stand of Christmas trees.
"And we have these beautiful old trees, 200 and some years old, black walnuts and Norway spruces."
Thomas Michelanko farms a number of properties. "They're going through a lot of my hayfields," he said. Karl Darby rode up to the gathering on a tractor, armed with a U.S. Flag. Taped to the front of his tractor was a printout showing the pipeline's new route going through the middle of a building lot he owns.
Becca Hoff found out on July 24 that the new route impacts her land. "On Thursday, Delaware Township schoolchildren came to my farm, as they've done for three years, to find monarch caterpillars on the milkweed," she said. "This year, I found my first one right on the pipeline route," she said. "To find that, on the same day PennEast filed, I'm taking it as a sign."
The protestors vowed to continue their fight, with a gathering planned Monday at 10:30 a.m. on Bald Pate Mountain.
"This is our strength, our caring for each other," Cronheim told the crowd. "That's actually what's going to carry us through."
Sallie Graziano may be reached at sgraziano@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SallieGraziano. Find The Hunterdon County Democrat on Facebook.