Penn Township board will visit proposed natural gas compressor site

Penn Township Zoning Hearing Board members will take a road trip to the site proposed for a natural gas compressor station.

Before it makes a decision on the request for a permit, the five-­member board unanimously agreed to visit the rural site along Wilderness Road near the Murrysville border.

Protect PT environmental group attorney Lisa Johnson told the board the visit would give them a better understanding of the area where Hyperion Midstream LLC of Canonsburg wants to build the compressor station. Protect PT wanted to have two members of its organization and Hyperion join in the site visit, as well as attorneys for both organizations.

Hyperion attorney Robert Max Junker said it is unusual for a zoning board to visit a site. Junker said he would want the visit to be limited to the proposed site for the compressor station and a well pad to be drilled in the future.

Hyperion is requesting a special exception from the zoning ordinance to build the six-generator gas compressor station on a section of a 219-acre parcel owned by Bow & Arrow Land Co. of Monroeville. Hyperion has a tentative agreement to purchase the property for a price that is redacted from the agreement contained in the application permit.

Bow & Arrow had purchased the property from HET Development in 2014 for $1.2 million, according to papers filed with the Westmoreland County Recorder of Deeds.

A compressor station like the one Hyperion wants to build moves methane from a gas well and removes any solids or liquids or other particulate matter though scrubbers and filters, according to Penn State Extension. After it is cleaned, the gas is piped to the individual compressors to increase pressure. Once the gas is compressed, it would flow into the Eastern Transmission gas line.

There will be four, 400-gallon tanks at the site to hold fluids removed from the methane, according to Leah Blinn, a chemical engineer who heads the corporate air quality practice for Civil & Environmental Consultants Inc. of Monroeville.

Blinn sparred with the Protect PT attorney over the composition of the chemicals in the fluid. Blinn was unable to fulfill Johnson’s request for a full list of the chemicals but said she believes most of the fluid used to fracture the shale to release the methane would have been removed from the methane before it reaches the compressor.

A computer program that creates a sound impact assessment of the noise made by six engines inside the proposed compressor station showed the decibel level at the property was under the ordinance limit of 90 decibels, Junker said.

Monitors set up by Acoustical Control LLC of Colleyville, Texas, to test the decibel level of the compressor station — through use of a computer model — found the noise would be in the mid-50 decibel range at the nearest house, which is 1,260 feet from the property line, said Tage Rosendahl, an acoustical control manager. The facility is designed to meet the ordinance requirements, Rosendahl said.

The hearing is to resume when the board meets March 14.