Dear Editor,

Danville and Boyle County citizens live, walk and drive over one of the most potentially dangerous threats anyone can imagine. It lurks beneath the ground near at least one public school, countless private homes, churches, health care centers, senior living facilities and local businesses.

Over more than five years, a multi-billion-dollar, out-of-state company has been attempting to convert a World War II-era pipeline for use as a means to ship highly explosive, lethally toxic NGLs (natural gas liquids). Recently, FERC, our nation’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — the “guardian of our environment” — has again refused to step on the toes of Kinder Morgan, owner of the aging pipeline.

Residents of Danville and Boyle County must be awakened of the horrors that could come down on our pristine community if the Kinder Morgan pipeline is allowed to move forward and heaven forbid a leak or explosion ever materialized. Hazards to consider:

a) an explosion of NGLs many times one from natural gas;

b) human and farm animal fatalities from inhaling noxious fumes;

c) widespread air and water pollution that could last decades;

d) devaluation of homes, businesses and area farmland; and

e) creation of the world’s second Dead Sea — Herrington Lake.

The Advocate-Messenger has been a strong ally over the years with countless columns, publishing Letters to the Editor and clarifying the above concerns in its own editorials. Yet many local folks remain in the dark of this problem. The time for action is now.

Please write to our congressional delegation in Washington, D.C. Tell your friends and neighbors to do likewise. The Kinder Morgan pipeline proposal is not limited to Boyle County; it extends 964 miles from upper northeast Ohio down near the Gulf of Mexico.

An alarm bell was raised in western Boyle County a couple of years ago when a section of the aging pipeline collapsed in a field behind a resident’s home — a 75-year-old pipeline with metal and welds that would not qualify under today’s environmental standards.

Prayerfully, more and more local residents, businesses, our hospital, clinics and health care professionals will sound the alarm to fight this untenable pipeline and prevent its use.

Tom Ellis

Danville