Concerns over a proposed PennEast natural gas pipeline continue to linger.

Two people expressed their concerns with the pipeline to Lower Towamensing Township's board of supervisors on Tuesday.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.The authority urged PennEast/UGI to redesign the pipeline route to completely avoid the watershed, Peters said.On July 27, Save Carbon County representatives met with affected landowners south of Route 209 in Towamensing and Lower Towamensing townships.Peters said the landowners recently commissioned a botanical survey of the area, which identified 13 threatened, endangered or rare species which would potentially be harmed by the pipeline.The survey says several grasses and plants could be affected, as well as two bat species, and the northeastern bulrush."The landowners agreed to work together, as a community, to stop the pipeline from damaging this environmentally rich area of our county," Peters said.Janine Carazo, of Save Carbon County, a member of a regional and two-state effort to stop the PennEast/UGI pipeline, said the organization is "very concerned thatresidents are ill-equipped to negotiate with the Penn-East/UGI company.""A pipeline easement can negatively impact property values, liability, mortgage and refinancing, and property insurance," Carazo said."Landowners need to ensure that the easement agreement is restricted to only one pipeline, that the size of the pipeline is specified, and that landowners clearly identify their rights for use of the easement after the pipeline is installed."Carazo added that the help of a lawyer is recommended.She said the pipeline path is moving about a mile and a half to the west of where it was originally expected to cross the Appalachian Trail."It will affect about 30 new property owners, but most of those will be in Northampton County," she said.Carazo added that they are also installing an interconnect facility near Blue Mountain, which reduces the pressure in the pipeline so it can be transmitted to a user.She said this will allow Blue Mountain to use the gas from this pipeline for their proposed co-generation plant, and noted that Blue Mountain received a $500,000 state grant to pay for the co-generation plant."This is the only interconnect facility planned for Carbon County, which means this is the only point for consumer use of the PennEast/UGI pipeline gas in Carbon County," she said.In March, supervisors adopted a resolution objecting to the construction and path of the proposed 114-mile pipeline, which would cut through Lower Towamensing, Towamensing, Penn Forest and Kidder townships on its way from Wilkes-Barre to New Jersey.The 36-inch pipeline has a projected in-service date of November 2017.PennEast is currently in the pre-filing stage and expects to make its formal application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by mid-September.PennEast continues to conduct rare, threatened, and endangered species surveys in areas where survey permission has been granted and expects to complete these surveys fully (for all survey granted-parcels) before the end of August.