Cumulative Land Cover Impacts of Proposed Transmission Pipelines in the Delaware River Basin

Watershed Protection

Cumulative Land Cover Impacts of Proposed Transmission Pipelines in the Delaware River Basin

Transmission pipelines function to transport petroleum products over long distances to connect locations where these products are produced or refined to demand centers. The development of Marcellus shale gas with hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania has been accompanied by several proposals for new transmission pipelines. At least eight of these proposed transmission pipeline projects will cross the Delaware River Basin (DRB) to bring natural gas produced from the Marcellus shale play to demand centers on the East Coast, or otherwise connect to the larger petroleum products pipeline network.  Each proposed interstate pipeline must undergo a review by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which includes an environmental impact analysis. The potential environmental impacts of pipeline construction include land cover change, deforestation, sedimentation and erosion, water quality degradation, stream degradation, wetland loss, and air emissions, among others. In this report, we investigate the cumulative land cover change impacts for eight proposed transmission pipelines within the DRB, which total 322 miles in length. Specifically, using geographic information systems (GIS) methods, we investigated total land cover change, loss of forest and wetland area, and stream crossings for the eight proposed projects. We found that during construction, the pipelines’ rights-of-way will impact 2,977 acres, including roughly 1,060 acres of forest, and 41 acres of wetlands. The pipelines’ permanent rights-ofway will impact 1,328 acres, including roughly 450 acres of forest, and 22 acres of wetlands. In addition, we identified 175 likely stream crossings where a proposed pipeline route will cross a perennial stream.

Published: May 2016
Authors: 
Lars Hanson and Steven Habicht, PhD
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