DANIA BEACH, Florida (AP) — Plans made by an international power company to build a 95-mile (153-kilometer) steel undersea pipeline, which would move natural gas from the Bahamas to southern Florida, were denounced at a public meeting.
AES Corp. bought a manmade Bahamian island, Ocean Cay, last year and announced plans to build a $1.3 billion complex of power and natural gas plants. The island is located about 50 miles (80 km) east of Miami.
The company’s plans call for the pipeline to be threaded through gaps in centuries-old coral reefs or installed underneath the reefs after horizontal drilling, but some residents expressed concerned Tuesday that the reefs would be irreversibly damaged.
“I find it abhorrent to everything I believe in that anyone would drill under a coral reef,” Bob Lovejoy said. “We are a tourist state. The fact that anyone would conceive of doing anything to the infrastructure of the endangered coral reefs off Florida is completely off base.”
Other concerns voiced at Tuesday’s forum included terrorist threats and other environmental damage.
“We understand peoples’ concerns, especially with the coral reefs,” said AES project manager Don Bartlett. “And the regulatory agencies are going to hold our feet to the fire to make sure the pipeline is installed in a way that causes no damage to coral reefs.”
Bartlett has previously said construction of the pipeline could begin next year, and the system could be operational by 2006.
The plans for this and other pipelines have been in development for years, as Florida tries to find ways to solve a growing need for energy and natural gas.
CNN
