MarcellusByDesign Has Design Flaw
By Ann Pinca
Laporte, Pa. - A MarcellusByDesign workshop held December 4 in the courtroom of the Sullivan County Courthouse fell far short of the expectations of many looking for an opportunity for real discussion and public input on the physical impacts of natural gas development.
Presented by landscape architecture professors and students from Penn State University, the workshop was a component of a larger National Science Foundation (NSF) grant project, "Marcellus Matters: Engaging Adults in Science and Energy," under the direction of Michael Arthur, professor of geosciences and co-director of the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research (MCOR). The stated goals of the workshop were:
- Familiarize citizens with the scope and potential benefits of planning in landscape protection
- Identify the roles that citizens can play in planning
- Empower citizens with the knowledge they need to participate in planning
- Identify potential goals and priorities for participatory
 |
|
Students presented ideas to preserve ridgeline views like this one in
Elkland Township.
|
planning
Brian Orland, Director of Interdisciplinary Programs, a
nd Timothy Murtha, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, were the
facilitators for the workshop, aided by twelve undergraduate students and one graduate student. The program consisted of individual student presentations and three break-out sessions incorporating hands-on activities.
Student presentations included many topics, and to their credit, the students' work reflected that they had invested much time, effort, and creativity to the problems selected to solve in terms of landscape architecture. Topics ranged from strategies to protect ridgeline views and reduction of visual impacts of infrastructure to storm water run-off prevention. Included were a few promising sustainability measures the county could better use to avoid the inevitable boom and bust cycle that natural gas development will bring.
But most presentations were about cosmetic fixes, and simply disguising industrial infrastructure is not what people concerned about health impacts from pollution are concerned about. A less visible compressor station or condensate tank disguised by camouflage-type painting may better blend in with the landscape, but does not in any way reduce its impact: it is still there and so is the pollution.
 |
|
The imposing M1S Compressor Station better blended into the background when different paint techniques were digitally applied to photos - but it was still there.
|
Likewise, other student projects on pipeline placement and mitigation techniques that may lessen the overall visual effect of pipeline corridors
still do not take away the very real problems of forest fragmentation or
the species population isolation, stream chemistry changes, edge
habitat and invasive species problems that the hundreds of miles of pipeline anticipated for Sullivan County will bring.
Hands-on break-out sessions included to allow public input were troubling. Designed mainly to rate or rank areas of the county most important to protect, the activities forced participants into a "Sophie's Choice" situation, making them choose which area to save and which to condemn to industrial destruction.
The only redeeming feature of the hands-on activities was direct interaction with the students. They appreciated hearing the concerns of the citizens to provide a better understanding, since, as one student said, "We don't live here." While encouraging to know that college students are at least looking into the problems facing citizens in rural areas of gas development, it can only be hoped that they understand the real issues, even through the lens of a landscape architecture class.
In the end, there seemed little presented at this workshop to assuage the worries of those in Sullivan County faced with the infliction of an aggressive, pollutant industry on the rural beauty of their homeland, other than that the damages might be covered up through landscaping visual tricks. Suggestions that the oil and gas industry will cooperate with landowners in infrastructure placement and design as suggested in this workshop seem unlikely, especially since most would include added costs.
Sadly, the likely reality seems more "business as usual," like what came up shortly after the workshop at the county planning meeting, when a resident asked if there was anything known about the placement of a particular gathering line and no one could answer his question. He just wondered, he said, since the actual location had been under dispute for some time and
was now staked out across his front lawn--and the pipeline crew had been there working on it that morning.
 |
|
Students used crowdsourcing to determine the most important view in Sullivan County. Their results showed that the view of the Loyalsock Canyon Vista was #1.
|
