State: Pipeline to damage gulf's hard bottom

Deep beneath the waves of the Gulf of Mexico, sponges and corals cling to the hard bottom. Grouper, snapper and amberjack gather there, often attracting anglers and divers by the boatload.

Now an Oklahoma energy conglomerate wants to snake a pipeline along the bottom to bring natural gas to power plants across South Florida.

The 753-mile pipeline would start in Mobile, Ala., cut across the gulf to the mouth of Tampa Bay and make landfall at Port Manatee in Manatee County. From there it will traverse 10 counties, crossing rivers and swamps and skirting the shores of Lake Okeechobee, terminating near Palm Beach.

In many places along the route, the company building the $1.6-billion Gulfstream Natural Gas Pipeline has gone out of its way to avoid harming the environment, even protecting Tampa Bay's fragile seagrass beds from any impact. But when it comes to the hard bottom, there isn't much Gulfstream's owners can do to get around causing some harm.

"The bottom line is, once you look at the very extensive area of live bottom and hard bottom, you do come to the conclusion that there's no way to avoid it," said project manager David Hairston.

As a result, the U.S. Department of Commerce has complained that "this pipeline has the potential to significantly degrade sensitive marine habitats, including those important to commercial and recreational fisheries."

When a project damages the environment, federal and state regulators usually require its owner to make up for the damage, for instance, building a new wetland to replace one paved over by a highway.

But no one knows how the Tulsa-based Williams Co. can mitigate the damage to more than 500 acres of hard bottom in the gulf, because there has never been a project like this one.

"We are unaware of a precedent to follow for the development of mitigation for offshore impacts of this nature," the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission admitted in the environmental impact statement on the project released last week.

The hard bottom is the foundation of all life in that part of the gulf. Ridges and niches in the limestone offer corals and sponges a place to grab hold, providing a home for shrimp, worms and starfish.

Smaller fish can conceal themselves in the nooks and crannies. Their presence attracts larger fish looking for food. Some, like snapper and grouper, grow up and stay there year-round. Some, like bonita, stop off there on their travels.

The hard bottom is the place where "the young hide and the big forage," says George Henderson of the Florida Marine Research Institute. As a result, the hard bottoms "are the most abundant areas of the gulf as far as wildlife is concerned," said Brian Donahue, a University of South Florida marine science graduate student. Donahue, whose specialty is mapping the bottom, has consulted with Gulfstream's experts.

The hard bottom is expected to be harmed not just by plowing a ditch to bury the pipeline in, but also by the anchors and cables used to hold the pipe-laying boats steady. Some damage may be permanent, some temporary. Scientists estimate a damaged hard bottom could take 10 years to recover.

The U.S Environmental Protection Agency contends that any damage to the hard bottom is "essentially unmitigatable" -- in other words, nothing the company can do will make up for it.

Yet unless Williams Co. officials can come up with some way to mitigate the "significant and long-term impacts to nationally important living marine resources," the National Marine Fisheries Service warned, "the NMFS will have to recommend against granting authorization of the project."

Two weeks ago, Gov. Jeb Bush and the state Cabinet granted the company a 30-year lease to run the pipeline across state-owned land, including the state-controlled portion of the gulf. They did so with the proviso that the company construct artificial reefs to make up for the damage to hard bottoms in those shallow state waters.

Essentially those will be chunks of limestone dropped into the water in the hope they will mimic the natural rock formations, attracting the same species. But state and Williams Co. officials say that may not do the trick in deeper gulf waters that are under federal control.

"There's really a lot of questions about this, and we're not sure," said Lynn Griffin of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Nevertheless, in a meeting in St. Petersburg last week with pipeline officials and federal regulators, state officials contended that the company should be required to at least try to do something to replace the lost hard bottom in federal waters.

The initial pipeline plans were far worse.

Until recently, there were two trans-gulf pipelines being planned by rival companies. Originally, Williams was building one that would come ashore in Pasco County, while Gulfstream was being proposed by Coastal Corp. of Houston.

But the Federal Trade Commission pressured Coastal to sell the Gulfstream pipeline project to Williams, as a condition of Coastal merging with another company that controls the only existing natural gas pipeline into Florida. If Coastal had an interest in both, it would smack of a monopoly.

As a result of the sale, completed last week, Williams dropped plans for the Pasco pipeline, which was more controversial because it passed through more populous areas. Now Williams is in charge of the Gulfstream project, which was further along in the permitting process, and had already lined up several power plants as potential customers.

The Gulfstream pipeline originally was expected to damage nearly 6,000 acres of hard bottom. But over the past few months, the company has agreed to change its pipe-laying techniques, slashing by about 90 percent the acreage affected.

State officials are now urging Williams to bend the pipeline farther north as it nears Egmont Key to protect another 50 of the remaining 500 acres of hard bottom that will be affected. And federal fisheries officials are pushing the company to reroute the pipeline to avoid an area of the gulf known as Steamboat Lumps, a gag grouper spawning area where fishing was recently banned.

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council has warned that "construction of a pipeline through this area could disrupt this habitat and affect gag grouper spawning."

Although Williams is "very far along in the permitting process" for the pipeline, which Williams hopes to begin next year, the company may make those changes, project manager Hairston said. "The verdict is not in," he said, "but there are strong indications that both would be improvements."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk