Joanne Wachholder wrestled with a table-sized map of the Fallston area and pointed through the trees at the far edge of the Fallston Middle School property, toward the spot where a proposed pipeline would carry natural gas through Harford.
There would be 818 feet of woods, a stormwater pond and athletic fields between the nearest corner of the school to the edge of the pipeline’s 50-foot-wide right of way, she said. Residents remained uncertain about the project’s safety and environmental risks.
“You can’t carry a gun within two miles of a school after Columbine, and they want to put a pipe full of explosive material right next to one,” said Guido Guarnaccia, who lives in Dundalk near the proposed liquefied natural gas plant that would feed gas into the pipeline.
Wachholder, a representative of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, led about 50 people on a caravan tour to several places in Fallston that the pipeline would pass through between the Sparrows Point plant and its junction with other natural gas lines in Pennsylvania. The pipe would go through parts of Baltimore, Harford and Cecil counties
Johnathan Streett, of Fallston, repeatedly asked how wide the potential explosion from the pipe would be, which federal officials said they had calculated but refused to release to the public.
“They get me coming and going … the pipeline goes past both my kids’ schools, through my property and through my neighborhood,” said Ann Paszkiewicz.
Tracy Tamberino runs a day care business from her house on Wildwood Drive, close to the power lines the pipeline would follow.
“I’m worried about what my day care kids’ parents would say — whether they’d be worried about their kids’ safety,” she said. “This is my business it’s affecting.”
FERC is expected to make a final decision on the LNG plant and pipeline in November. Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith earlier this week asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider a local zoning law that would ban the project.
