Trees that had been occupied by pipeline protesters cut down
At daybreak Sunday, the company building the Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids pipelines across Pennsylvania cut down three trees on property in Huntingdon County that opponents of the pipeline had lived in for more than a year to block construction.
The three white pines, which contained housing structures 50 feet above ground and were connected by ropes and zip-lines, were not occupied when they were cut down, according to Elsie Gerhart, the 29-year-old daughter of Stephen and Ellen Gerhart, owners of the 27-acre property.
Ms. Gerhart said the timing of the tree cutting indicated that the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, and its security contractor, TigerSwan, had conducted extensive surveillance to determine when the trees would be unoccupied and could be safely cut. In a news release announcing the action, she called the cutting an “underhanded and cowardly attack.”
Lisa Dillinger, an Energy Transfer spokeswoman, issued a statement Friday confirming the trees were removed in preparation for pipeline construction work in the area.
“This was carefully orchestrated with law enforcement to ensure the safety of everyone
involved — the safety of our workers, the landowners and all other interested parties,” Ms. Dilinger said. “It was verified prior to our cutting the trees that they were unoccupied.”
Ellen Gerhart said in a Friday phone call that the company’s tree cutters arrived in the pipeline right of way at day’s first light, before she got up to let her chickens out at 6:45 a.m. Sunday.
“I saw them in their green vests on the easement and went over to watch,” she said. “They were already going up into the trees and cutting the ropes. And after the ropes were cut away, they cut down the trees.”
She said pipeline opponents had been in the pines tree-sitting the day before the trees were cut but came down because of high winds.
“We managed to hold them off for two years from building the pipeline through the property, so I’d call that a partial victory,” Mrs. Gerhart said. “And we’re not done yet.”
There are trees still standing in a wetland on the easement, Mrs. Gephart said, and a group of five to 20 pipeline opponents remain camped on the Gerhart property.
Asked if some of those opponents might try to recolonize the remaining trees, she said, “Nothing is off the table.”
Opponents of the $2.5 billion pipeline project began sitting in three trees next to the company’s right of way, acquired through eminent domain, in March 2016. The Gerhart property is in rural Huntingdon County, about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh.
Two of those trees, unoccupied at the time, were cut down a month later, but in February 2017, activists went back up into three new platforms — an encampment they dubbed “Camp White Pine.” Activists remained in the trees throughout the year, even after Sunoco, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, went to court in June seeking an injunction allowing the company to call in county sheriffs to remove the protesters.
The trees occupied by the protesters were in a 25-footwide work space the company was trying to clear-cut alongside the 50-foot-wide easement.
Rich Raiders, the Gerharts’ attorney, said additional trees remain in the work space, but he doesn’t know if pipeline opponents will attempt to re-colonize those.
Mr. Raiders said the company’s Sunday morning tree cutting may have violated a U.S. Forest Service seasonal prohibition against cutting trees in forested areas where the endangered Indiana bat is known to reside.
“There’s no evidence Sunoco received an incidental take permit or applied for a waiver from the Forest Service that would allow the cutting,” said Mr. Raiders, who filed a Freedom of Information Act request Monday to determine if such a request had been filed.
Ms. Dilinger said Energy Transfer partners “had permission from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to remove these trees.”
Mr. Raiders said the Gerharts also are pursuing a challenge to Sunoco’s wetlands disturbance permits with the state environmental hearing board in Harrisburg.
“The basic question is do you have to look up to characterize a wetlands,” he said. “The state has characterized the wetlands on the Gerhart property as emergent, but the Gerhart wetlands are in a forested area that the state has told Sunoco it doesn’t need to consider.”
The state requires more protection for forest wetlands than emergent wetlands.
Sunoco is building the 350mile, twin 24-inch-diameter pipelines to transport natural gas liquids from shale gas wells in Western Pennsylvania to terminals near Philadelphia, where most of the liquids will be shipped to Scotland for plastics production.
Its parent firm, Dallasbased Energy Transfer Partners, is the same company that in 2016 used attack dogs, pepper spray and fire hoses on Native American protesters and their supporters blocking the construction route of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.