NORWICH – Chenango County officials monitoring the natural gas industry plan to develop permitting procedures for companies wanting to bore under roads, and make them available to towns.
Nornew Inc. has already bored under county Rt. 16 in Plymouth and on three town roads in Smyrna. An 8-inch pipeline is planned to go beneath Rt. 22 in the very near future, said a company spokesman.
Supervisor James B. Bays, D-Smyrna, said he had been involved in two of his town’s road borings thus far, but one occurred before a notification process was in place.
“The agreed-to protocol is for them to contact us, and they have been now. Like anything else we do, we need standardization and protocols. We are moving in that direction,” Bays said.
Nornew would prefer to cut a trench across a roadway to lay pipeline perpendicular to it because boring underground is much more expensive. “But it’s better for the road in the long run instead of having to patch it,” said Nornew’s Dennis Holbrook. The company did receive permission from town officials to cut through a seasonal road in Smyrna.
Holbrook said Nornew’s operations staff have had a good working relationship with the town and county highway departments when it comes to boring. He said he was “hopeful” the company would receive the same cooperation if given the opportunity to lay transmission lines parallel to county roads, a practice that has thus far been denied by the county.
“The bottom line is that we also serve the public (like other utilities). We obviously are moving gas on behalf of resident property owners who have an ownership interest in that gas and are residents of the county,” he said.
Natural Gas Committee Chairman Peter C. Flanagan told the Board of Supervisors on Monday that boring procedures were needed, in addition to a potential change to the county’s charter that would enable it to lease county land for easements. A county law that legislates general powers of the board of supervisors, General Law 215, can only be altered via specialized legislation at the state level.
“Mr. Flanagan’s committee is looking at doing this right now,” said county Attorney Richard Breslin.
Bays suggested that the New York State Public Service Commission take more oversight responsibility for boring. “Someone should know how to identify these lines later,” he said.
“We’ve had a very good working relationship with them (Chenango County),” Holbrook said. “Our concerns about having a right to lay (pipeline along) the public right-of-way don’t take anything away from our appreciation for the manner in which they’ve helped to work with us on issues such as the road bores.”