ALBANY COUNTY — Albany County is looking for answers from the Tennessee Gas Pipeline and its parent company, Kinder Morgan. The county legislature passed a resolution this month that called for an information session about proposed pipeline expansion. New Scotland passed a similar resolution in November.

Last week, Tennessee Gas announced new routes for its proposed Northeast Energy Direct (NED) project, but a majority of them follow the same pipeline routes that exist in the towns of New Scotland, Berne, and Knox, while expansion of pipe laterals may extend the project through new areas of Berne and Westerlo.

Letters detailing the changes, which do not affect Albany County, were mailed to affected property owners on Dec. 12.

On Tuesday, New Scotland town board member Daniel Mackay told The Enterprise that Kinder Morgan Inc., which owns Tennessee Gas, had tried to contact him but had not yet spoken with him, and Mackay surmised that the purpose was to discuss a potential information-sharing forum in New Scotland.

Last week, after months of silence from Tennessee Gas, Mackay said that he had not received a response from the company about the town’s request for a public forum.

“I do have an indication…but never a commitment,” Mackay said, noting that he heard from a spokesman for Congressman Paul Tonko. Tonko, a Democrat representing the Capital Region, is a member of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, and he was given a copy of the county resolution.

“They have made Kinder Morgan aware of the [county’s] request,” Mackay said. Kinder Morgan is supposed to contact Mackay to have “more conversation about it,” he said. “There are certainly concerns about the pipeline, the right-of-way…and issues of trespassing and vandalism” on the pipeline’s easements on local residents’ properties, Mackay said.

“I look at this vague map that they sent me,” said Berne Supervisor Kevin Crosier last February when the expansion was announced, “and what I want to know is, where does that proposed pipeline fall on each tax parcel in the town of Berne, so I can tell the residents that live there this is where the proposed pipeline is going to fall?”

His comments are still being echoed by New Scotland and Albany County legislators, which passed formal resolutions to request that Tennessee Gas hold public-information sessions.

In an early letter about the expansion to residents, Tennessee Gas stated that it “anticipates that it will be able to locate a significant portion of the pipeline adjacent, or generally parallel, to existing pipeline and electric utility corridors.”

New Scotland residents, however, complained to the town board in November about existing pipeline easements and worries of their expansion.

In November, resident Rebecca Wojtecki, who owns 92 acres on Clipp Road, said, “We have a lot of concerns. We have a lot of troubles with trespassing, which will only get worse” with expansion, she said.

Peter Kelly, of Spore Road, said that more than one Tennessee Gas line goes through his 140-acre property.

“We have kind of battled this right-of-way for…years,” he said. People use the right-of-way through his property to ride all-terrain vehicles or snowmobiles, and as a firing range, he said. Kelly said that, when Tennessee Gas vented the system several years ago, the sound was like an explosion that rattled his windows.

“This is a huge pipeline,” he said, stating that a 36-inch diameter pipe handles 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas. One billion cubic feet is a value used by the gas industry to describe an amount of pressure, with the energy of every 6,000 cubic feet of natural gas being equal to that of one barrel of oil. One billion cubic feet of gas equivalent can produce roughly 1.028 trillion BTUs, according to investopedia.com, or enough energy to power all of Delaware’s natural gas needs for more than one week.

“It’s not a trivial addition to New Scotland,” Kelly said.

 “I just worry about the safety of the whole thing…in addition to what it does, [to me] personally,” he said. “This project is nothing, to us, from a beneficial standpoint.”

Mackay noted then that towns in Massachusetts and elsewhere along the pipeline have hosted Kinder Morgan for public discussions.

“I think the town deserves something upfront that other communities have,” he said.

After the county passed its resolution in December, Mackay told The Enterprise of Kinder Morgan, “They’re part of our community, but we can’t get a public forum. That’s a basic issue for me.”

On Dec. 5, Kinder Morgan announced that Tennessee Gas Pipeline adopted new routes for the NED project, but the changes are meant to lessen environmental effects in Massachusetts, according to a Kinder Morgan press release.

“TGP plans to host open houses in the project area beginning in mid-January 2015 to provide additional information and answer questions,” the release said.

According to the Dec. 12 letter to affected property owners, Tennessee Gas will meet with landowners on a one-to-one basis to discuss survey needs and other details about the expansion.

Last Friday, Richard Wheatley, the director of corporate communications for Kinder Morgan, told The Enterprise, “We will be having public meetings rescheduled after the first of the year.” Wheatley said that he could not confirm that Albany County would be included in the rescheduled meetings, as the locations and schedule are not yet set. “We’ll post on the website once that occurs,” he said.

Wheatley was unable to respond immediately to the formal resolutions passed by the town of New Scotland and the county legislature.

“In the interim, [I] will check with our outreach group and see what they can tell me about any contacts from the towns...noted and when meetings are likely,” Wheatley told The Enterprise Monday.

According to the Northeast Energy Direct project map provided at kindermorgan.com, the existing routes cross Schoharie County to Wright, in Gallupville; run across Albany County and directly through New Scotland, and end in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The new routes include proposed lateral pipelines, or segments of a pipeline that branch off the main or transmission line, that would cut from Wright through both Berne and Westerlo, heading, eventually, to Queens, Long Island, and Connecticut.

The proposed start of construction is April 2017, with service to start in November 2018.