I read with interest last week’s Letter to the Editor regarding the proposed sale of Longmeadow Country Club property so that a gas metering station can be built. To the ques-tions posed in last week’s Letter, I’d like to add a few of my own:

• Where’s the evidence that warrants the need for such a facility? Isn’t Longmeadow a community that’s already 97% developed?

• If a Columbia Gas pipeline will connect with the Longmeadow metering station and end with a two mile run down Sumner Avenue, what is the pipeline’s purpose for Springfield? To my knowledge, that stretch of Sumner Avenue is in a neighborhood that’s been fully devel-oped for years.

• How is the safety of this new pipeline to be guaranteed? Given what happened in Merrimack Valley, where is the Columbia Gas protocol that would ensure safety? Who will be in charge of enforcement? Where are the safety standards?

• What about the economic “hit” that homeowners living near the metering station might take in terms of their property values? What about the businesses along Sumner Ave-nue? How much is this proposed pipeline going to cost them?

• With respect to health issues, I know that both Longmeadow and Springfield Boards of Health have joined other cities and towns in writing to the Governor, asking him to halt ex-pansion of gas pipelines until a statewide study can be conducted to establish their safety. Isn’t it smart to wait until that study’s results are in? The air in the Lower Valley is bad enough without introducing even more harmful pollutants to it.

If these questions go unanswered before the scheduled November 28th Longmeadow Country Club vote (as I suspect they will), I’m all for deferring the vote until the public is proper-ly informed.

Laurie Robinson
Longmeadow