A judge's order earlier this spring put a temporary halt to construction of a natural gas pipeline, part of which runs through Harford County.
Behind the ruling are concerns about the environmental impact of the project relating to pipeline crossings of streams. There is good reason to be concerned about such crossings. Streams are environmentally sensitive and can be damaged by heavy equipment digging under their beds to install pipelines. There needs to be an assurance that streams to be crossed aren't damaged by the work.
There is no reason, however, to presume the pipeline will end up being permanently halted. For one thing, most of the work on the 21.1 Columbia Gas Transmission MB line has been completed in Harford County and for another eight miles in Baltimore County, including the crossing of Little Gunpowder Falls, the two counties' border, by a method of tunneling known as horizontal directional drilling, or HDD.
In other words, the wisdom of stopping a $180 million project, when about half of it already is built, might call into question the judge's logic, if the Maryland Department of the Environment had done a better job of reviewing the pipeline in the first place.
Environmental concerns aside, however, there's an economic argument for moving forward.
The advent of technology that allows for the extraction of vast amounts of natural gas from the mountains to the north and west of this area has changed the shape of the world energy market. That gas will be drilled and it will be going to market. The reality is, oil and natural gas are the fuels that run the world economy, and when they are found in large quantities, getting them to market is a high priority.
Even so, there is a lot of money involved in the MB pipeline, and enough of that money needs to be spent so the people who live around the pipeline can feel safe about their homes and the surrounding environment. Stopping the project for good, however, isn't something that's likely to happen or, for that matter, necessary.