Last Saturday opponents of the Mariner East pipeline project were supposed to gather at Glenwood Elementary School to hold an evacuation drill.
It has been one of their most vocal complaints about the multi-billion project, that officials have yet to deliver an emergency response plan in case of the two dreaded words that cling to this project: What if?
What if there is a problem? A leak? An explosion?
The drill was cancelled. Instead protesters gathered a short distance away, for a very compelling reason. There was another issue with a sinkhole linked to the pipeline project. This time it occurred in Sleighton Park, near Valley and Forge roads in Middletown. That is just a few feet from the fields where kids play in youth soccer leagues.
The folks at Sunoco and their Texas-based parent company, Energy Transfer Partners, downplayed what they called a "subsidence," confirming that the old 12-inch pipe being used as a workaround to ferry liquid gases while the 20-inch Mariner East 2 pipeline continues to be constructed was exposed, but that there had been no leak and there were no injuries.
That won't calm the jittery nerves that continue to stalk this project, which will eventually see hundreds of thousands of barrels of volatile liquid gases such as ethane, butane and propane from the state's Marcellus Shale region to a facility in Marcus Hook.
That takes it through densely populated neighborhoods.
Don't look for the protests to go away anytime soon.
We talk about it on today's editorial page.
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