Editor:
I’m writing regarding “Bye-Bye, Backwoods” (Reading Eagle, May 16) and the story of the Sunoco Mariner East 2 project forcing itself onto landowners’ properties for the construction of their pipeline. How does this happen?
The topics of fracking and pipelines have always been floated under the banner of our country becoming independent of the need to purchase oil from other countries, specifically those in the Middle East. Now it seems a private company, Sunoco, has been granted eminent domain so that natural gas from the Marcellus shale region will be carried to Marcus Hook, where it will be sent overseas to be converted for use in plastics manufacturing. And how does that make our country more independent? All it does is line the pockets of Sunoco. What a miscarriage of justice to use eminent domain for the purposes of making money for a specific company.
How important is selling natural gas products overseas to make plastics compared with the disruption of so many lives and the danger involved in living so near these gas lines? Who exactly granted the eminent domain, and did they really weigh the risk/rewards? Who benefits from this land rape except for Sunoco?
I empathize with the Walter and Rahn families and all other landowners involved in this theft of land. How helpless it must feel to watch bulldozers disrupting your property against your will and for no good reason. Something is terribly wrong in this country for this to happen.
Cathy Busti
Cornwall, Lebanon County
