Political pressure from county commissioners and fierce opposition from a growing number of property owners won’t deter the El Paso Corp. from pursuing plans to build a massive, underground natural-gas pipeline through parts of Palm Beach and Martin counties, company executives said last week.
Palm Beach County commissioners on Tuesday joined Martin County commissioners and the Palm Beach Gardens City Council in formally opposing the Houston-based company’s plans to build a 165-mile pipeline, 26 inches in diameter, from the Bahamas to a Florida Power and Light plant in Indiantown — a route that skirts residential neighborhoods and cuts through environmentally sensitive preserves.
And efforts to derail the pipeline recently gained an unlikely ally: pipeline workers from four national unions, who plan to mount a petition drive and erect a billboard somewhere in Palm Beach County blasting El Paso’s safety record, including a rupture in New Mexico two years ago that killed a dozen people.
Still, El Paso officials strongly defend their record and insist they’ve proposed “a very good route” for the pipeline they’ve named Seafarer. It would originate on Grand Bahama Island, run along the ocean floor to the Port of Palm Beach, cut across Peanut Island, through Mangonia Park and then up the Beeline Highway to Martin County.
They say the pipeline would provide clean fuel for the area’s growing population and generate about $1.1 million in property taxes for Palm Beach County and $350,000 for Martin County every year.
“I don’t like hearing there are resolutions against us,” said Jack Lucido, vice president of El Paso’s eastern pipeline group. “We’ll try to work with them as much as we can, but our answers might not be what they want to hear.”
Project managers are pressing forward with the designs and hope to file an application in the next few months seeking necessary approvals from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Bahamian government.
While local governments can raise concerns, federal officials have the ultimate power to approve the $250 million project.
If El Paso can’t reach an agreement with FPL to supply natural gas for an expansion of its Indiantown plant, plans for the route could significantly change, Lucido said. He hopes to have a contract with FPL and other utility customers, which he would not identify, by March or April.
FPL spokesman Nick Blount declined comment on the status of negotiations with El Paso.
Residents along the route said they plan to flood FPL with letters and e-mail expressing their fears about the safety of placing a high-pressure gas line near homes and preserves.
Commissioners in Palm Beach and Martin counties share their worries. In a joint resolution, the commissioners said they have “grave concerns about routing the pipeline through or near their communities and the potential for ruptures and explosions.”
Those concerns were fueled two weeks ago when the National Transportation Safety Board released a report that blamed the August 2000 explosion that killed a dozen campers near Carlsbad, N.M., on faulty maintenance. The explosion resulted from water and other corrosives that had eaten through a section of pipe — decay that should have been detected by the El Paso subsidiary that operated the pipeline, investigators said.
And three weeks ago, an El Paso natural-gas pipeline ruptured in Viola, Ill., where witnesses said 500-foot flames shot out of the earth and left a crater 25 feet deep and 40 feet wide. No one was injured, and the cause of the rupture has not been determined.
Those ruptures are part of the reason Oklahoma-based Pipeline Workers of America plan to protest El Paso’s plans in South Florida. The group says it will go door-to-door along the proposed route gathering petitions demanding the state Public Service Commission investigate El Paso’s 3,377 miles of pipelines in Florida and show proof they’ve been adequately inspected and repaired.
That should be completed before El Paso is allowed to build any new pipes, spokesman Bill Goodrich told Martin County commissioners.
The group says its goal is to “maintain the integrity” of the pipeline construction industry. They point to statistics from the national Office of Pipeline Safety that show El Paso and its subsidiaries have had 94 ruptures and 151 leaks since 1984.
“It’s a difficult thing for us because we want pipelines to be built,” Goodrich said. “But if all everybody hears about are ruptures and leaks and incidents like in New Mexico and Illinois, then nobody will want pipelines.”
Lucido argues the group is just angry that El Paso hires non-union workers. El Paso recently launched a 10-year plan to inspect the insides of all the pipelines it operates in the United States, he said.
Pipes are extensively inspected at every stage from the iron mill to after they’re buried in the ground, he said. The company patrols and inspects the lines by air every month and up to four times a year on the ground. Computers in Houston monitor the lines 24 hours a day, he said.
“We have a very extensive safety program,” Lucido said. “There are 300,000 miles of natural gas pipelines in the U.S. and for 30 years they’ve been serving the needs of the nation very, very safely.”
By Sarah Eisenhauer, Palm Beach Post
