More than 1,500 people, organizations, municipalities and counties have signed on to get involved in the PennEast pipeline case, including Luzerne County Council and several local people.

When PennEast Pipeline Co. LLC filed its application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Sept. 24, it started a 30-day period for interested parties to comment or intervene that ended on Thursday.As of Monday, when FERC posted the last of these on the docket, approximately 1,520 residents, landowners, organizations and municipalities filed to intervene. Interveners have legal standing in the case, and are also put on email lists to receive information.PennEast plans to construct a $1 billion, 114-mile, 36-inch diameter pipeline that would start in Dallas Township at the Transco interstate pipeline, run through Luzerne County, then go through Carbon, Northampton and Berks counties, cross into New Jersey and terminate in Mercer County, New Jersey.In Carbon County, affected municipalities include Penn Forest, Lower Towamensing, Towamensing and Kidder townships.All of the townships have filed formal opposition to the line. Carbon County Commissioners have also voiced concern.The pipeline will cut through several state parks, state game lands and the Bethlehem Water Authority property near Beltzville.About a dozen of the interveners are utilities or have a financial stake in the project, including UGI Distribution Companies; South Jersey Gas Co.; Consolidated Edison Co. of New York Inc.; PSEG Energy Resources & Trade LLC; Texas Eastern Transmission LP, a subsidiary of Spectra Energy Partners; the New Jersey Natural Gas Co.; and Pivotal Utility Holdings Inc., doing business as Elizabethtown Gas.Cabot Oil & Gas, which produces Marcellus Shale gas at wells in northeastern Pennsylvania, is also intervening. A few of the interveners are neutral, like the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.But the overwhelming majority express concerns about the project, particularly about effects to the environment, public safety, peoples' properties and the power of eminent domain, which PennEast would have if FERC approves the application.Roy and Linda Christman, Towamensing Township residents, have spoken out since the project was first proposed in 2014."This pipeline affects the entire county," Christman told Penn Forest supervisors earlier this year. "What really bothers me is that it starts in the same place as an existing Transco pipeline and ends where that pipeline ends. But it blazes a whole new route with a permanent 50-foot right of way."Lower Towamensing resident Sandra Peters said the Bethlehem Water Authority issued a report on July 16, stating concerns about the PennEast/UGI pipeline crossing its watershed and endangering critical facilities.Peters said the authority cited the pipeline's negative impacts on the headwaters and streams that feed their reservoirs and the pipeline conveyance system that carries drinking water to 115,000 residents of the Lehigh Valley.Peters is a member of Save Carbon County, a group formed to stop the PennEast/UGI pipeline.The pipeline would also pass through Bear Creek Camp Conservation Area, Natural Lands Trust's Bear Creek Preserve, and State Game Lands No. 91, all protected areas. Opponents cite concerns about flooding issues, as well as the danger of passing through abandoned underground mining areas and near an active quarry in Plains Township.Now that the period to comment or intervene has closed, FERC staff begin drafting an environmental-impact statement which, when complete, will open another comment period.