BY JON O’CONNELL
Times-Shamrock Writer

A natural gas pipeline company on Monday agreed to pay an $800,000 settlement for numerous sediment-control violations while constructing a pipeline across Pennsylvania’s northern counties.

The Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. violated Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Law while building the 300 Line project, a 127-mile pipe from Potter County to the New Jersey border, in 2011 and 2012, the state Department of Environmental Protection said in a news release.

Conservation district officials in Wayne, Susquehanna, Pike and Potter counties found inadequate erosion control and sediment running into streams along the project, some of which are protected for their high quality, the DEP said.

In a prepared statement, officials from Tennessee’s parent company, Kinder Morgan Inc. of Houston, Texas, said in order to resolve the DEP’s “outstanding allegations,” Tennessee “voluntarily entered into a settlement with the Department.”

A Kinder Morgan spokeswoman also said the 300 Line project was completed while Tennessee was under its former parent company, El Paso Corp.

Kinder Morgan purchased Tennessee and part of another El Paso pipeline for $6.22 billion in August 2012, according to a company news release.

Most of the settlement — $540,000 — will go to special programs to clean up illegal dump sites around those four counties. The DEP said Tennessee is not legally obligated to fund the clean-up projects.

Tennessee will work with conservation districts and the Pennsylvania Environmental Council to determine where the money will be most effective, DEP regional spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said.

About $50,000 of the settlement will go to the conservation districts and the DEP to recoup investigation costs. The remaining $210,000 will go to the department.

Jay Sweeney, chairman of the Green Party of Pennsylvania, said he’s glad the department and the company are fixing the issue, but he wasn’t completely satisfied.

“It’s a shame that these agencies can’t be proactive and watching what’s going on, preventing this kind of mishap in the first place,” Mr. Sweeney said. “I’m glad these things are being addressed, and there will be some kind of remediation (at the dumping sites), but really what needs to be done is monitoring.”