To the Editor:

September will always be my New Year.  The academic calendar was permanently engrained in my being and I feel a sense of spring-like renewal and energy as the small people begin marching up to Sippican School wobbling against nearly their own weight in backpack contents.

The slightly larger people in coats and ties and skirts crossing Front Street with their backpacks on their way to lunch or calculus or soccer practice reinforces that idea that new stuff is happening, new friendships and new connections are being forged.  The change in tempo wakes you up from August’s dog days, Red Bull for the soul!  It almost takes the sting out of the fact that the harbor will begin to empty soon.

My New Year got even better when I was contacted by Gerry Rosen to help a group of East Marion citizens forge a more physical kind of connection to the rest of the town.

When we bought our home in East Marion we knew we would miss cooking with natural gas and knew that heating our home would be more expensive with oil than it had been in the village but didn’t give it much thought.

I’m glad to tell you that we have more active citizens who are willing to challenge the status quo and attempting to connect East Marion to the rest of the town and share the access to natural gas that you might enjoy today.

Natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel and roughly 50 percent cheaper to use to heat your home and 70 percent cheaper than propane.  This represents a sizeable chunk in a typical household budget. Candidly, this is the primary reason why I want natural gas to come down Jenna Drive.

However, burning natural gas instead of heating oil also produces 50 percent lower carbon dioxide emissions and, as a sailor, I know that in some very small way using natural gas might help prevent future oil spills like the one in 2003 that dumped 98,000 gallons of fuel along 53 miles of western Buzzards Bay shoreline.

At present about 700 homes in Marion, or roughly a third, do not have access to natural gas.  NSTAR is currently working on an economic and engineering analysis to see if the extension is worth their while.  My hunch is that the analysis is a result of active prompting from the East Marion Natural Gas Committee.

This group has studied all the possible ways of hooking up East Marion including a separate gas cooperative modeled after 3,700 successful rural utilities currently providing gas, water, sewage and electricity to their cooperative members. We don’t think of ourselves as a rural community but our low density and other measures qualify us for this possibility.

This volunteer group from East Marion has the skilled technical and professional leadership necessary to make this happen but the hope is that NSTAR moves promptly forward with their own extension.

The best way to move this forward is for every East Marion resident to send an email to Gerry Rosen at tigereye2@comcast.net and say simply “We want natural gas at our home.”

That simple expression of interest is what moves us closer to having NSTAR extending the gas lines that already serve most of the town.  We, who will choose to hook up now, will likely have to pay either a modestly higher gas rate or other fee for acquiring the new service – fair enough.

Even if you do not want natural gas now, I would ask you to consider supporting the extension of lines to East Marion because some day some gourmet cook may be walking through your home considering buying it and turn to your real estate broker to ask “Is gas available here?”

Support the extension as way to support your choice of whether to hook up to it or not, now or in the future.

Fall is in the air, a great time to forge new connections to our fellow neighbors and citizens working to improve our town.  Send Gerry a note at tigereye2@comcast.net and say “We want natural gas at our home!”  Thanks for your consideration.

Dan Cooney

Marion resident