Cache County Council members are concerned that two pipeline projects are proposed in Cache Valley because the valley's north end extends into Idaho. They invited Kent Connelly, chairman of the Lincoln County (Wyo.) Commission to tell them about the projects' impacts.

Connelly's own neighborhood hosts 23 natural gas pipelines. He said Cache Valley residents can expect more pipeline proposals, as well as requests from power-transmission operators to develop new corridors.

Planned jointly by natural-gas companies Williams and TransCanada, the latest proposal, to be known as Sunstone Pipeline, would be a 585-mile, 42-inch-diameter system that can carry up to 1.2 billion cubic feet per day. Completion is scheduled for 2011.

Sunstone would primarily run through Idaho's Franklin County, south of the route of the Williams' Northwest Pipeline System between Wyoming's Opal hub and Stanfield, Ore. There, it would connect with TransCanada's Gas Transmission Northwest pipeline system, terminating at Malin, Ore.

Similarly, El Paso Holding Co. proposes to complete the Ruby Pipeline across northern Utah in 2011 with a 680-mile, 42-inch pipe from Opal to Malin. It would have an initial daily capacity of 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas with the option to increase that capacity to 2 billion cubic feet per day.

The Ruby line would run through Utah's Rich, Cache and Box Elder counties just south of the Utah-Idaho line.

Members of a grass-roots group - Stop the Ruby Pipeline - have argued that Ruby would breach private-property rights and environmental stewardship across northern Utah.

But Stop the Ruby Pipeline spokesman Bruce Leishman said his apprehension isn't limited to Ruby, although the Sunstone proposal is more viable because it's near an existing corridor.

"It's a general concern for all [pipelines]," said Leishman, a Logan real-estate agent. "It would diminish the value of property anywhere because it limits what you can do with it, and it limits the pristine nature of what we have out here."

Sunstone spokeswoman Michele Swaner said earlier this week that the Sunstone project is in preliminary stages. The proposed route will cross BLM territory and only a minimal amount of private land in southern Idaho's Franklin County.

"We sent Sunstone Pipeline project packages to 11 landowners in Franklin County, which accounted for 28 parcels of land," Swaner said. "We have been [operating] in the Pacific Northwest and Idaho for 50 years, and we know the communities we serve."

abrunson@sltrib.com