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Pipeline Developer Kinder Morgan Applies to Build in 2017

A controversial natural gas pipeline proposed to cut across Southern New Hampshire has submitted its application to Federal Regulators. 

Natural gas pipeline developer Kinder Morgan filed its application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build a 420 mile pipeline from Pennsylvania to Dracut, Massachusetts. The project would lay 30 inch diameter pipe over 70 miles through towns on New Hampshire's Southern border.
 
 
If the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission were to grant it a certificate, the project would be granted the power of eminent domain, and would hope to begin construction in early 2017. Kinder Morgan says it hopes the project would be in service by November of 2019. 
Developers moved the pipeline's route north through New Hampshire after intense pushback from residents and politicians in Massachusetts. While Granite Staters who live along the route have mounted an increasingly organized response, political opposition has thus far been muted. Business groups in the state are carrying out a vocal campaign putting a spotlight on the state's high energy prices. 

Three public information sessions for the project are scheduled for the first week of December, and an application before state siting officials isn't expected until January. Project officials say the state review would happen concurrently with a federal review. 
 
The filing comes comes just a few days after a report from the Massachusetts Attorney General's office found the most cost effective way to reduce energy prices in New England would be to invest in energy efficiency and other technologies that would cut demand for energy overall. That same report, however, found the pipeline would save electric rate payers $133 million dollars a year.
 

Sam Evans-Brown has been working for New Hampshire Public Radio since 2010, when he began as a freelancer. He shifted gears in 2016 and began producing Outside/In, a podcast and radio show about “the natural world and how we use it.” His work has won him several awards, including two regional Edward R. Murrow awards, one national Murrow, and the Overseas Press Club of America's award for best environmental reporting in any medium. He studied Politics and Spanish at Bates College, and before reporting was variously employed as a Spanish teacher, farmer, bicycle mechanic, ski coach, research assistant, a wilderness trip leader and a technical supporter.
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