Ammonia pipe an easy target

A section was not protected. Why? No one saw a need for it to be protected.

By THOMAS LAKE and ABBIE VANSICKLE, Times Staff Writers
Published November 14, 2007

Hillsborough County Fire Rescue crews apply water canons to the ammonia leaking from at pipe at US Highway 301 bridge over the Alafia River in Riverview. The leaking pipe is underneath the water shooting from the water canon in the lower right of the photo. Complete coverage: The latest news, maps and traffic updates
	[Skip O'Rourke | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Skip O'Rourke | Times] As water cannons spray close by, Mike Clark of Houston lines up a gate Tuesday to help stop an ammonia leak near the Alafia River. The breach created transportation nightmares.

RIVERVIEW - Beneath the soil, encased in steel, ammonia flows like a subterranean stream. Nearly 300 gallons a minute run from a port at the edge of Tampa Bay to a chemical plant in Mulberry. Most of us never notice.

Hillsborough County's 1.16-million residents might still be ignoring this hidden passage if not for the improbable meeting on Monday afternoon of two anomalies:

An eight-foot section of unprotected pipe.

And a 16-year-old boy who believed it was full of money.

The results were spectacular, the damage still uncounted. With a noise like an uncorking champagne bottle, toxic gas spurted through a tiny hole in the pipe, burning the boy and forcing authorities to order the evacuation of hundreds of people living within a half-mile radius.

The gas injured firefighters, forced the shutdown of U.S. 301 and the closing of schools. The cloud spread over the Alafia River, threatening snook and trout.

A day later, gas still seeped from the line. The evacuation order remained in effect, as a specialized welder who was flown in from Houston began repairs.

And some people wondered: If a teenager and a drill could cause such chaos, what might someone do with expertise and a plan?

"We're a very open society," said Greg Laughlin, a former U.S. representative from Texas who worked to improve pipeline safety. "And it allows for terrorists and stupid people to do terrible things."

The pipeline was installed in 1981, when much of eastern Hillsborough County was still farmland and swamp. The ammonia is used to make fertilizer, which goes everywhere from cornfields in the Midwest to soybean operations in India.

According to Glenn Howell, who manages the pipeline for Tampa Pipeline Corp., the steel is about a quarter-inch thick. Most of it is underground. The only place it surfaces is at the Alafia River, under the U.S. 301 bridge in Riverview.

Most of that section is covered in a second layer of steel. But there is one stretch, just 8 feet long, that runs from under the bridge into the ground at the riverbank. That part is not protected.

Why not?

"There's no requirements for it," Howell said. "There's never been a reason for it."

In fact, Damon Hill, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the federal body that regulates pipeline safety, said his agency has no regulations regarding pipeline security.

Further explanation was elusive Tuesday.

"The pipeline's been there that long without anybody breaking into it," Howell said. "The way I look at it, somebody in his right mind is not going to go drill a hole in that pipe."

Legend had it there was money in the pipe. One of the three boys involved in the incident, a juvenile who has not been named by authorities, spoke with the St. Petersburg Times. He said the boys only wanted to find out if the legend was true.

He is 15, a high school freshman. He said he and his cousin heard about the cash-pipe from a woman they knew. She told them her brother had once gone on a crime rampage and stored the money in a pipe at the bridge.

He said that on Sunday, the boy who would later be burned went to the pipe alone and tried to drill a hole but didn't succeed. He told the others he had found the pipe.

The 15-year-old didn't think it sounded like a pipe that held money. He had pictured a pipe with a capped end.

The boy with the drill bought fresh bits and all three returned to the bridge Monday. Once there, the two cousins decided to turn back. One was reaching for his shoes when they heard a pop.

When the cousins looked back, the boy with the drill had jumped in the water and was rubbing his eyes, which turned pink. The boys didn't know what had happened, the 15-year-old said, but they worried it would land them in jail.

The burned boy pulled his shirt off. He smelled awful. The cousins had to breathe through their own shirts.

The three walked back to the burned boy's home, where his parents came outside and asked what had happened. When the injured boy's symptoms worsened, his mother called an ambulance.

The boy was taken to Tampa General Hospital, where he was treated for burns over 18 percent of his body, sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said.

The 15-year-old heard on the news that firefighters had been taken to the hospital. He said he felt sorry about what had happened. He said they saw no warning signs on the pipe.

No charges had been filed as of Tuesday. If the 16-year-old gets criminally charged, legal experts said prosecutors could seek restitution from him for the costs of cleanup and law enforcement's time. But it would be nearly impossible to hold his parents financially responsible because they are not charged with a crime.

Faced with a cloud of toxic ammonia gas in the air near homes and schools, county officials had to choose between public health and environmental damage. Firefighters doused the cloud with water, sending ammonia into the river. Benjamin Franco, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency, said human life was the first priority. "The vapor has actually reached people," he said. "The environment is second at this point."

There were no signs of a fish kill on Tuesday, and drinking water will not be affected because Tampa Bay Water draws its supply several miles upstream from the leak site.

But environmental officials said Tuesday that it was too soon to tell the leak's ultimate impact. The ammonia could fertilize algae, deplete the water's oxygen supply and suffocate fish.

This is not the first time the ammonia pipeline has been breached. In 2003, a man in the FishHawk area was accused of breaking into the pipeline to steal ammonia, which is used to make methamphetamine. It took 34 hours to control that leak. After that, Tampa Pipeline Corp. installed new security measures - but did not protect the exposed section under the bridge.

Documents show that Tampa Pipeline has been cited more than once for violations of federal safety regulations. A 1998 order from Richard B. Felder, associate administrator for Pipeline Safety at the U.S. Department of Transportation, stated that, among other findings, the company failed to properly coat exposed pipeline to prevent corrosion. The company was fined a civil penalty of $4,000.

A year later, the company was warned about similar violations: failing to properly examine buried pipe for external erosion, failure to properly clean and coat the pipe to prevent corrosion and failure to properly document regular inspections of some of the pipe's monitoring equipment.

Republican state Sen. Ronda Storms, whose district includes the pipelines, said she wants to bring up the matter before the Senate Military Affairs and Domestic Security Committee.

"This is the second breach in my district from a couple of dipsticks," she said. "If a common thief can drill into it for financial gain, someone with a whole lot worse intentions could do it too."

Late Tuesday at 10 p.m. officials had to admit that an earlier, rosier notion of the pipeline's status had been wrong. "I wish I had good news," Fire Rescue Capt. Bruce Delk said, "but I don't."

Earlier in the day, officials reported pressure in the pipeline had dropped to 20 pounds per square inch, much closer to the zero pressure needed before the leak could be patched. Delk said latest pressure reading was 100, and officials couldn't account for the increase other than to say perhaps the earlier one was an error.

The evacuation and road closure will remain in effect, he said. Officials had no estimate of when residents might return home.

Neither was it clear what Tampa Pipeline Corp. would do to keep the exposed 8-foot section safe from future damage.

"We'll protect it somehow," Howell said. "I just don't know how."

But Laughlin, the former congressman, said security only goes so far.

"The people here in Florida could not afford the product that goes through that pipeline if you had to protect it from every malicious stupid person," he said. "The cost would just be too high."

Times staffers Casey Cora, Catherine Shoichet, John Martin, Rebecca Catalanello, Colleen Jenkins, Saundra Amrhein, S.I. Rosenbaum, Andrew Meacham, Kevin Graham, Janet Zink and Bill Varian contributed to this report.

BY THE NUMBERS:

The pipeline

1981  Year pipeline was installed.

2003  Year it was last breached.

1,800 Number of tons of ammonia that flows through the pipeline each day.

90     Number of truckloads it would take to equal the amount of ammonia the pipeline can deliver in one day.

0.28  Thickness, in inches, of the steel pipe.

8      Length, in feet, of the unprotected section that the boy drilled into on Monday.

Source: Glenn Howell of the Tampa Pipeline Corp., Times reporting

[Last modified November 14, 2007, 01:37:11]