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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? e-edition | subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW (No heading) ... Our View: Charging ahead on supporting electric vehicles ... Rogue River man allegedly copped to fatal knifing, affidavit says ... (No heading) ... Our View: Charging ahead on supporting electric vehicles ... Rogue River man allegedly copped to fatal knifing, affidavit says ... OUR VIEW Our View: A pipeline should not run through it Comment MailTribune.com Writer Posted Jan. 11, 2015 at 2:00 AM Updated Jan 12, 2015 at 9:45 AM Posted Jan. 11, 2015 at 2:00 AM Updated Jan 12, 2015 at 9:45 AM » Social News A proposal to build a 232-mile-long pipeline to carry natural gas from Klamath County to an exporting facility in Coos Bay has drawn expected protests from environmentalists and property owners along the pipeline's route. We don't think their arguments are especially compelling, but we do think they are on the right side of the debate, for a different reason that can be boiled down to two words: public benefit. Aside from the jobs that will be created — the vast majority of which will be temporary — the Pacific Connector pipeline project does not provide a public benefit. Rather, it provides a benefit to a private Canadian company that wants to export an energy resource to buyers in Asia. To do that, it proposes to build a pipeline across the mountainous terrain of Southern Oregon, crossing 400 streams and rivers along the way, to connect to a massive natural gas terminal at Jordan Cove in Coos Bay, where the gas would pass through a super-cooling process before being loaded onto tankers bound for the Far East. If you are a resident of Coos Bay, you might well argue there is ample public benefit in the form of an estimated 145 permanent jobs that would inject hope into a community desperately in need of that commodity. If you live in Klamath, Jackson or Douglas counties, the public benefits are considerably less: an estimated $11 million in annual property tax revenue (of which about $3 million would go to Jackson County). The price of that payment includes allowing eminent domain seizures of rights of way through hundreds of property owners' lands, a 36-inch pipeline crossing the Rogue, Klamath, Umpqua and Coquille rivers, to name the most prominent, and the construction of a processing plant in Coos Bay that on start-up would immediately become one of the largest, if not the largest, emitter of greenhouse gas in Oregon. We take the environmental concerns with a large dose of salt, however. The impact of the pipeline construction would be temporary, save for the 50-foot-wide corridor along the pipeline route. Concerns raised that Pacific Crest Trail hikers would see that corridor for one to three minutes do not move us to wring our hands. The fact is, people have an impact on the world around them, something that seems to escape the hard-core environmentalists when they turn on the light in the morning, take a shower and then drive to a protest meeting. There are myriad federal and state environmental rules the pipeline and terminal builders will have to follow and we have confidence the project can be built with minimal — not zero, but minimal — impact. The oft-mentioned "likelihood" of some sort of explosion along the line or at the facility is a scare tactic that doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Nothing is absolutely safe, but new technology has made these pipelines remarkably resistant to outside forces, even earthquakes and tsunamis, as evidenced in Japan in 2011. We certainly sympathize with property owners along the route and think that some of the payments proposed, most in the several-thousand-dollar range, are not nearly enough from a company that stands to reap hundreds of millions — probably billions — over the years from its sales of natural gas. Were this a project with a discernible public benefit, such as a highway or a power line, the property owners' concerns would have to be set aside for the good of the larger community. But that's not the case. In the end, once this line is built, the benefit will fall almost wholly to the private company financing it and secondarily to the area of Coos Bay. Some may argue that the jobs, including the significant number of temporary construction jobs, create the public benefit in a region that has never fully rebounded from the loss of timber and fishing jobs. But there are counter arguments (from, among others, Dow Chemical) that siphoning off a cheap and readily available energy source for export will in the end cost American manufacturers and American jobs. We have long argued that the state and federal governments need to find a way to work past the stalemate that has crippled resource-dependent rural areas and give people hope that they will again see jobs and dollars pumped into their economies. This project does not do that, however, but rather would pump profits and jobs through our region, on their way elsewhere. MailTribune.com Writer Posted Jan. 11, 2015 at 2:00 AM Updated Jan 12, 2015 at 9:45 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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