Pro­posed Eddy­stone LNG ter­minal could have county­wide impacts-The Swarthmorean, Aug 21, 2026

By Fran-Claire Ken­ney

The future of Eddy­stone, a small bor­ough in the Rid­ley School Dis­trict along the Delaware River, is murky. A lique­fied nat­ural gas (LNG) com­pany pitched an export ter­minal to Eddy­stone Bor­ough Coun­cil last year, and most of the details remain obscured by a 2025 nondis­clos­ure agree­ment (NDA) between the two entit­ies.

The LNG ter­minal was ori­gin­ally slated for Chester under Penn Amer­ica Energy Hold­ings (PAEH), which went off­line in 2024 after push­back from Chester res­id­ents.

Doc­u­ments obtained through a Free­dom of Inform­a­tion Act (FOIA) right-to-know request by the Delaware River­keeper Net­work indic­ate through email sig­na­tures that Eddy­stone Energy, the com­pany behind the cur­rent pro­posal, is reportedly led by PAEH founder and former CEO Franc James.

Along with Chester Res­id­ents Con­cerned for Qual­ity Liv­ing (CRCQL), Delaware River­keeper Net­work first opposed the LNG pro­posal for Chester and now opposes the Eddy­stone pro­posal. The two envir­on­mental advocacy groups argue an LNG ter­minal in Eddy­stone would increase pol­lu­tion and pose an explo­sion haz­ard.

An unusual loc­a­tion

A PAEH present­a­tion that was shared in a meet­ing with Eddy­stone Bor­ough Coun­cil on March 7, 2025 maps the com­pany’s LNG trav­el­ing from the Delaware River to six coun­tries in south­ern Asia and west­ern Europe, describ­ing the river as “an ideal export loc­a­tion.”

Accord­ing to Dr. E. Carr Everbach, a Swarth­more Col­lege pro­fessor of engin­eer­ing and a Walling­ford res­id­ent, pla­cing an LNG ter­minal in a densely pop­u­lated area such as Eddy­stone could be unsafe.

“Usu­ally, these nat­ural gas plants are built at least 1,000 feet, and maybe many thou­sands of feet, away from res­id­ences,” he said.

Eddy­stone is under two square miles in size, so there is little room for a buf­fer zone. And in May, the FOIA doc­u­ments obtained by the Delaware River­keeper Net­work revealed the ter­minal would be built less than 1,000 feet away from res­id­en­tial Eddy­stone.

Everbach and CRCQL founder Zulene May­field said an LNG ter­minal would increase air pol­lu­tion, adding to the nitro­gen and sul­fur that are already released by the Delaware Val­ley Resource Recov­ery Cen­ter (formerly known as Cov­anta) in Chester and the Phil­adelphia Inter­na­tional Air­port.

In addi­tion to people inhal­ing the pol­lut­ants, “air emis­sions deposit on water and veget­a­tion and land,” attested Tracy Carluc­cio, Delaware River­keeper Net­work deputy dir­ector.

Water pol­lu­tion is itself a poten­tial haz­ard. Carluc­cio said LNG export ships would require dredging in order to access a dock in Eddy­stone, affect­ing Delaware River water qual­ity. Everbach added that since LNG requires extens­ive cool­ing, plants typ­ic­ally use nearby bod­ies of water to remove excess heat.

“Very likely, the Delaware River water would be used to cool the pro­cessing in the LNG plant, and that would res­ult in either warm water being returned to the Delaware River, or… con­cerns for how to cool that water before return­ing it to the Delaware River,” he said.

Risk of explo­sion

LNG ter­min­als and pipelines can explode if they leak, caus­ing fires that emer­gency ser­vices can­not put out. Recent LNG explo­sions in the U.S. include a facil­ity in Ply­mouth, Wash­ing­ton, in 2014; a ter­minal in Free­port, Texas in 2022; and a pipeline in Cameron Push, Louisi­ana earlier this year.

“Vir­tu­ally all LNG plants have had prob­lems,” Everbach said. “There’s not one that I’ve found yet that has had a per­fect record.”

Estim­ates by the Delaware River­keeper Net­work place Eddy­stone in the epi­cen­ter of a ter­minal explo­sion, but the blast zone extends bey­ond bor­ough lim­its to Chester and other neigh­bor­ing com­munit­ies. The “poten­tial flam­mable zone” extends 2.1 miles into Delaware County.

“Say that there’s an explo­sion,” May­field said. “People in Swarth­more will not be immune from that. People in Rid­ley will not be immune from that.”

Everbach also said an explo­sion would impact people as far as Swarth­more, with smoke car­ry­ing wherever the wind blows.

The PAEH present­a­tion alleged the infra­struc­ture needed to trans­port LNG from west­ern Pennsylvania to Eddy­stone was 99% in place, and these pipelines pass through mul­tiple com­munit­ies.

The pro­posed LNG ter­minal would trans­port LNG to Eddy­stone via the exist­ing Enbridge Texas East­ern Pipeline, which passes through Chester and Marple, and the exist­ing Transcon­tin­ental, which passes through Chester, Mar­cus Hook, Marple, Rid­ley Town­ship, and Spring­field Town­ship.

Polit­ical stances

Sup­port­ers of the pro­posed LNG ter­minal mainly cite poten­tial eco­nomic gains. One such sup­porter is U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R), who met with then-PAEH CEO James on March 20, 2025.

Pennsylvania state Sen. John Kane (D-9) and Pennsylvania state Rep. Dave Del­loso (D162) atten­ded the meet­ing with McCormick. FOIA doc­u­ments reveal Del­loso and Kane were also present at the March 2025 Eddy­stone Bor­ough Coun­cil meet­ing with the LNG com­pany.

“This massive, pro­posed project in south­east­ern Pennsylvania has the poten­tial to gen­er­ate bil­lions in eco­nomic impact over the next 20 years, cre­ate 3,000 good-pay­ing jobs, and pro­duce $30-40 mil­lion per year in tax rev­enue for this com­munity,” Sen. McCormick said in a press release after the March meet­ing.

On a local level, the bor­ough coun­cils of Lans­downe, Media, Rose Val­ley, and Swarth­more, as well as the Nether Provid­ence Town­ship Board of Com­mis­sion­ers, have passed motions to oppose the LNG pro­posal in Eddy­stone.

All motions cite con­cerns about air pol­lu­tion, health, prox­im­ity to a res­id­en­tial area, and the risk of explo­sion. They also call for inter­ven­tion from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to pre­vent the pro­posed ter­minal from being built.

However, accord­ing to FOIA doc­u­ments, the NDA from last year pre­vents Eddy­stone gov­ern­ment offi­cials from shar­ing inform­a­tion about the pro­posal, includ­ing site plans and trans­port­a­tion of LNG.

Eddy­stone Fire Mar­shal Bob Gliem, Mayor Ron­ald Hughes, and all Bor­ough Coun­cil mem­bers did not respond to mul­tiple requests for com­ment.

May­field atten­ded a Bor­ough Coun­cil meet­ing on July 13, 2026, at which four Eddy­stone res­id­ents, includ­ing one who spoke on behalf of busi­nesses, opposed the LNG ter­minal.

James could not be reached for com­ment. There is a web­site under the name Eddy­stone Energy, but its owner, Joe Cleary, said he had no con­nec­tion to the com­pany that is attempt­ing to estab­lish an LNG ter­minal in Eddy­stone.

No recent updates

Carluc­cio said the Delaware River­keeper Net­work makes new FOIA requests to vari­ous agen­cies every month, but they have not received new inform­a­tion about the pro­posed LNG ter­minal since May.

“There could be things going on that we don’t know about, and we won’t know about them until fur­ther down the road,” she said. “It’s very frus­trat­ing, because the pub­lic really wants to know.”

The next Eddy­stone Bor­ough Coun­cil busi­ness meet­ing is sched­uled for Monday, Sept. 14, and a work­shop meet­ing is sched­uled for Monday, Oct. 5, both at 7 p.m. Meet­ings are open to the pub­lic, but only Eddy­stone res­id­ents may give pub­lic com­ment.

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