Pipeline Creates Issues

It's a problem many landowners, Farmer and Rancher alike have seen over the years. What do you do when you don't like your neighbors?

Let's take for example what we see happening with a family, who says the construction of a proposed natural-gas pipeline would plow up their livelihood.

Teri Utz Bersee, who runs an organic farming operation near the proposed pipeline, said the project threatens farmland, open space and a river. A compressor station also is planned just a mile from her property, which Bersee noted will create a toxic cloud within close range.

"It luckily will not be in our direction most of the time," she said, "but the two- to five-mile radius of toxins falling will definitely hit our organic farm and we would not be able to grow anything there that is marketable as organic."

--- On the other hand, supporters say pipelines are the safest way to transport fuels across the state. Bersee argued that the dangers cannot be overstated as toxins from leaking pipelines and compressor stations contain dangerous cancer-causing chemicals.

"They watched this in other communities where people get ill," she said. "There are livestock illness and deaths, there are spontaneous explosions if not fires, there are mini-earthquakes - all of this from this nonsense going on."

Bersee also points out, her organic certification is difficult to obtain and can easily be compromised by chemicals or toxins.