JUDGMENT CALL
Matt Herb
I
f you've attended a Nittany Lion
football game lately, you may
have noticed the fencing that's
gone up along Park Avenue in
front of the Arboretum. The reason that the view of one of the
more picturesque spots on campus has
been blocked by a long expanse of blue
tarpaulin is because the university is
teaming up with a local utility company
to install a natural gas pipeline from the
swine research facility on Porter Road –
yes, this is a real place – to the steam
plant on Burrowes Street.
Why would Penn State go forward
with a problematic project involving the
installation of a pipe pressurized at 400
pounds per square inch through the
middle of campus, where the network of
existing utility lines creates any number
of potential obstructions? Because its
original plan was even more problematic. The original plan called for the
pipeline to be installed underneath
Prospect and Bellaire avenues. Residents of those streets claimed their
safety concerns hadn't been addressed
by the time the university's board of
trustees approved the project last November, and the reaction that followed
can perhaps best be described by a word
they don't like to use in the gas business: ka-boom. There were online petitions, angry letters to the editor and
contentious council meetings in which
residents claimed Penn State was about
to plant what one called "a ticking time
bomb" in downtown State College.
Whether those concerns were legitimate is a question for an engineer, not a
sportswriter. But thanks to the clumsy
rollout, it didn't matter. The pipe was
