A leading Princeton University geology professor and a geochemist/hydrologist formerly with the U.S. Geological Survey team up to explore the risks posed by the proposed PennEast pipeline.
Dr. Tullis Onstott has been listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, and discovered the deepest underground multicellular organism known to science. Dr. Julia Barringer has been researching New Jersey’s coastal plane for more than a decade.
In a recently-published letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Onstott and Barringer explain why the pipeline construction could elevate arsenic levels within clean water sources that supply drinking water to the region. Thanks to central Jersey’s particular rock formations, plus a pipeline construction technique known as “horizontal directional drilling,” ground and surface water that feed the Delaware River are at risk for unacceptably high amounts of arsenic, a toxic and carcinogenic element.
You can read their findings here (scroll down the page to view).