Hampton Roads landowners, including some from Suffolk, gathered at Jolliff Middle School on Monday night to learn more about plans to bring a natural gas pipeline.

Dominion will build and operate the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, pending regulatory approval, for a four-member joint venture that includes Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas and AGL Resources.

The 550-mile-long, $4.5-billion project is needed to ensure customer demand is met, according to the companies.

The gas would come from the Marcellus shale gas fields in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. The project is expected to run from Harrison County, W.Va., to Robeson County, N.C., with a spur coming east from the Virginia/North Carolina state line through Hampton Roads, including Suffolk.

Inside the middle school cafeteria, folks crowded around dozens of maps, on easels and spread out on tables, charting the latest proposed route, which Dominion spokesman Frank Mack said passes through the Great Dismal Swamp and the Sunray community around Bowers Hill.

“We need to prove to them that is the best route,” Mack said.

Dominion held 13 open houses on the pipeline in September and adjusted the route based on feedback, according to Mack. Monday’s was the second of 13 fresh open houses to be held in three states.

Following that, Mack said, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will hold a series of “scoping meetings,” potentially in March. Citizens will be permitted to voice their concerns at those meetings, he said.

“The plan right now is that later in the summer, we will file the preferred route with FERC,” Mack said. “If they approve it, it will take at least a year — the summer of 2016.”

Construction would start later in 2016, he said, with the pipeline operational in 2018.

Steve Ferguson was one potentially affected Suffolk landowner studying the maps Monday. He said he hopes the engineers try to stay as close as possible to a 70-foot easement existing in a number of the affected properties.

“I haven’t formed an opinion, for or against,” Ferguson said. “When they start saying how they are going to compensate people, that’s when I find out whether I’m for or against.”

Chris and Amber Bigbie of Bowers Hill also wanted to see exactly where the pipeline would pass in relation to their property.

“Is the soil going to be able to handle this kind of pipeline?” Chris Bigbie asked. His wife added, “At our place, you can hear the ground shake with the traffic on the roads.”

Answering the questions was a small army of Dominion staff and consultants, including engineers as well as right of way and safety experts.

“We’ve heard a lot about safety,” Mack said of the concerns people have. “We have been struggling, because there’s a lot of misinformation put out, either because they just don’t understand it well enough, or purposefully misinforming.

“People feel they are going to lose their property, which is not true. (And) Dominion has a strong safety record.”

Alterative pipelines routes are under consideration, Mack said. “We just sent some letters out recently to landowners of potential alternatives,” he said.

Information from landowners is critical in devising the best possible route, according to Mack. “We have made literally hundreds of changes to this (current preferred) route, most of them small,” he said, adding that 75 percent of landowners throughout the route have agreed to allow surveys.

“It all comes back to getting critical information and feedback from landowners.”