Dear New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy,

We urge you to use your leadership role at the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to secure a decision by the DRBC to close the file on the PennEast Pipeline project.  

You have demonstrated tremendous leadership and clarity on the issue of PennEast.  You have stood up for the rights of your state ensuring compliance with state law and protecting the public lands that New Jerseyans have protected for present and future generations.  We urge you to take the next step and lead the DRBC to the conclusion that it is time to close the application file on the PennEast Pipeline.

Since 2014, when the PennEast pipeline was first proposed, the public and experts have submitted mountains of evidence proving: 

•  the devastating impacts that the PennEast pipeline would have on our waterways, environments and communities,
•  that PennEast cannot and will not meet the DRBC regulations, standards and waterway protections, and that
•  the information PennEast has submitted to the DRBC, to FERC and to all the affected state regulatory agencies is false, misleading, deficient and legally unfit to support any positive regulatory outcome. 

These truths apply to all of the ever-changing iterations of the proposed pipeline that the PennEast pipeline company has concocted and advanced. 

In response to the deficient and misleading information provided to the state of New Jersey, the NJ Department of Environmental Protection rejected the project and closed the file years ago.  And yet DRBC has allowed PennEast to keep the application open despite its ongoing failure to provide full, complete, accurate and truthful information on the project’s proposed route, elements and impacts.   

Keeping the file open is a waste of limited DRBC time, resources and money.  It is time for DRBC to close the file on PennEast. 

Governor Murphy, please continue to lead and propose that the DRBC pass a resolution to close the file on the PennEast pipeline.