State Hears Landowners’ Concerns Over Natural Gas Pipeline

Landowners from Sumner and Trousdale counties continue to oppose a pipeline that they say could reroute some creeks and springs.

Midwestern Gas Transmission has applied for a permit from the state that would bring them one step closer to building a 31-mile pipeline, crossing 230 waterways.

Landowners are still waiting on a decision from the Tennessee Division of Water Pollution Control, but they expressed their concerns in a public hearing last month.

Lorrie Marcum is a landowner in Sumner County. She says when a pipe is built parallel to a creek, the water changes its natural route and tends to travel the direction of the buried pipeline.

“That’s 230 opportunities for water to get rerouted elsewhere away from a pond, away from a stream, away from a well away from a spring that’s used further down the line. I mean we could potentially impact not just Tennessee, not just Sumner and Trousdale counties, but everything south of us. All the way down to Florida.”

However the natural gas company says it’s done its own site studies that show that there would be little impact on the water flow.