Some Prince William County residents in the Dale City area are learning about a new natural gas pipeline that could be laid near their homes.
According to project documents, New York-based Opal Fuels is considering laying a seven-mile pipeline from the county’s landfill on Route 234 along a powerline easement that cuts through the Hillendale, Mapledale, and Princedale neighborhoods in Dale City, to the county government center at 1 County Complex Court, off Prince William Parkway in Woodbridge.
The project is tied to an agreement approved by the Prince William Board of County Supervisors in September 2021, which allows New York-based Prince William RNG (renewable natural gas) LLC to collect methane and carbon dioxide produced naturally at the landfill by the decomposing waste, and convert it to electricity.
Two days before Christmas in December 2022, Dale City resident Tricia Zipfel said she received a letter from a pipeline survey company Pinnacle Resources Group, of Louisiana, stating a new pipeline could be laid feet from her single-family home on Castlebridge Lane.
The letter stated that the company is performing a feasibility study for the pipeline. Zipfel said she was alarmed at the prospect of a gas pipeline near the home on a half-acre she’s owned since 2006.
As a Prince William Board of County Supervisors meeting dragged on into the early morning hours of Wednesday, January 18, 2023, Zipfel demanded to know why the county didn’t notify area residents of the pipeline study.
“I spent Christmas trying to find out more about the company behind this,” said Zipfel. “The letter says that if a pipeline is constructed, ‘you will be contacted again’ for the purposes of purchasing an easement for our property,” Zipfel said.
Zipfel was one of mutiple residents who spoke during the meeting.
During the supervisors’ meeting, Neabsco District Supervisor Victor Angry apologized to Zipfel and other affected residents for the county’s lack of notification. “There has been a serious breakdown of communication about this project,” said Angry.
Angry called Tom Smith, the county’s public works director, who helped to pen the new natural gas agreement between the county and Prince William RNG, LLC, to address the project at the supervisors’ next meeting on Tuesday, January 24, 2023.
The county’s public works department told PLN this week it’s working on a public outreach campaign about the new pipeline.
According to Zipfel, more than 800 residents live in the area where the new pipeline would be laid.
Since 1999, a private firm has extracted natural gas at the landfill for the purpose of converting it to energy. During that year, 1,600 standard cubic feet per minute of gases were produced at the landfill.
Today, the landfill produces more than 5,000 standard cubic feet per minute. About 50 percent is converted for energy while the remaining is burned off, according to county documents penned in 2021.
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