Photo by Lester Smith
Two big fellar-bunchers grab groups of small trees, saw them off or wrench them out of the ground, then lay them on the pile to be chipped. Larger trees are delimbed and stacked. Preparatory work for installing the new gas transmission line, began in early May. The big timbers are laid where needed to protect wetlands.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave its approval on April 12 for construction of Kinder Morgan’s Connecticut Expansion Project, and work began in Suffield in early May. The big corporation’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company division, which operates transmission pipelines from Texas and Louisiana to New York and New England, includes 6.7 miles in Suffield.
The Connecticut Expansion Project will increase capacity to meet increased demand in the Northeast by adding three short stretches of new lines alongside the existing lines: 1.4 miles in Dutchess County, N. Y., 3.8 miles in Berkshire County, Mass., and 8.1 miles in a branch that runs across Connecticut from Greenwich to Agawam, including 6.7 miles here. That branch ends at the compressor station on Route 75, just over the state line in Agawam, which is also the connecting point to the line from across upstate New York.
The existing 18-inch line across Suffield was installed in the 1940s. The new parallel line will be 24-inch. A Kinder Morgan communications officer in Texas advises that the Connecticut Expansion Project pipelines are designed to operate at about 800 psi but will normally operate at lower levels. The natural gas in the line, mostly odorless methane, will be odorized. Among other local customers, Yankee Gas, the distributor in Suffield, is supplied by the Tennessee Gas pipeline.
Preparatory effort for construction in Suffield began several years ago when property owners were warned and negotiations for some changes in right-of-way privileges were undertaken. Then in April the route was marked with flags, and in May construction crews began preparing the plank roads necessary to protect wetlands and cleared brush and trees along the right-of-way. Digging and pipe-laying will follow. The Kinder Morgan information source said that the work was scheduled to be complete this November.
Specifications call for the new pipe to be buried at least five feet deep. According to the plans, most of the eight road crossings will be achieved by boring under; only Halladay Avenue West and Hale Street will be crossed with open cuts. Temporary pipeyards are to be located at each end of the Connecticut segment, one just north of Hickory Street, the other at Bradley Airport in East Granby, near the end of Runway 15/33. There will be a new main line valve at about the midpoint of the segment, just south of Mountain Road.
When the new electrical power line was added across West Suffield five years ago, there was considerable public complaint about the line’s effect on landscape views and the increased electro-magnetic radiation. In contrast, the gas pipeline, which will cause some temporary disruption at the road crossings and carries an intrinsic threat of explosion, has evoked essentially no clamor except for the Sierra Club’s protest march in Suffield last September. We trust the new pipeline will remain peacefully out of sight and out of mind, like the one it will join.