State: Gas pipeline to cut across state forests

With barely any discussion, Gov. Jeb Bush and the state Cabinet voted unanimously last month to let a company that once incurred a half-million-dollar fine for environmental violations build a pipeline across two state forests and a state preserve.

One of the areas the Cabinet agreed to let the Florida Gas Transmission pipeline cross in Citrus County is the Lecanto Sandhills, an ecological jewel that the Cabinet voted four months ago to spend $4.5-million to preserve from development.

State officials say this is a necessary trade-off. If approved by federal regulators this month, the $440-million FGT line expansion will allow Tampa Electric Co. to convert its coal-burning power plants to a cleaner fuel, a move that promises to dramatically reduce air pollution in the Tampa Bay area.

Pipeline officials say they had to cut across the Lecanto Sandhills, the Seminole State Forest and the Lower Wekiva River State Preserve to avoid running the pipeline through densely populated areas. They say they have changed their construction procedures since the 1994 incident in which they caused so much environmental damage in Blackwater River State Forest near Pensacola that the state fined the company more than $500,000.

"FGT has an environmental record we're proud of," company spokeswoman Gina Taylor said.

That's not good enough for Judy Hancock of the Sierra Club, who battled in vain to persuade state officials to reroute the pipeline.

"I think they should stay off public land," she said. "As much money as they make, they should get it right."

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Every ounce of natural gas that now burns in Florida arrives here through the FGT line, which stretches 5,000 miles from Texas to Miami.

Another company, Gulfstream, is now building a 744-mile pipeline across the Gulf of Mexico to compete for customers, marking the first challenge to FGT's Florida monopoly in 40 years.

The FGT line is jointly owned by two of the nation's energy giants, Enron and El Paso Corp., both based in Houston, and it is operated by Enron.

One of the handful of companies dominating the booming natural gas industry, Enron has strong ties to the White House. Enron and its employees have given more money to George W. Bush's political campaigns over the years than any other company, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Enron's chairman donated $100,000 to pay Bush's legal bills during Florida's presidential recount.

The pipeline's co-owner has been more controversial. California regulators have accused El Paso of using its control of a pipeline there to inflate gas prices, resulting in sharply higher prices for electricity consumers. The company denies the charge, but last month the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered an expanded inquiry.

Both Enron and El Paso have proposed building several merchant power plants around Florida, all to be powered by natural gas. Meanwhile, the state's major utilities are repowering their old plants to convert them to the cleaner fuel.

One of them is TECO, long vilified as one of the state's worst polluters. Last year, TECO reached a settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calling for a $600-million conversion of its Gannon power plant in Tampa from coal to natural gas. The deal also requires TECO to switch its Big Bend plant in Apollo Beach to a cleaner fuel, install better pollution-control equipment or shut it down.

To bring natural gas to TECO and another power plant switching to gas, the Florida Power & Light plant in Sanford, FGT wants to add an extra 167 miles onto its existing line.

The line would cross 267 wetlands, disturbing more than 300 acres of them while burying the pipeline.

Although the company will attempt to repair or replace any damage, Hancock said, "It's hard to go back and change that to the way it was."

The expansion is not all in one piece. There are loops and extensions in a half-dozen places. Where it crosses state land, the line frequently follows along roads or power lines, a technique known as co-location. Co-location helps avoid disturbing pristine areas, say experts, although it's not as good as going completely around them.

"My bottom line is, they should bend over backwards, even if it costs more money, to locate somewhere other than on state land," said Dennis Hardin of the state Division of Forestry, who has worked with FGT officials on their route. "The problem with co-location is that the corridor just gets wider and wider and wider. I fully expect that sometime it will be expanded again."

Sure enough, FGT officials -- who just finished their last expansion of the Florida line in May -- say they are drafting plans for another expansion. At this point, though, they say they don't know exactly where it will run.

Co-location has other pitfalls. In crossing the Lower Wekiva River State Preserve near Orlando, the line would run along an existing fire break. However, the fire break is only 8 feet wide, so FGT would have to clear an additional 22 feet of vegetated habitat along the pipeline's path.

Federal regulators suggested an alternative route that would have avoided the preserve. But that would have required running the line through a populated area, as well as installing four 90-degree bends in the line, restricting the flow, so state officials did not require the change.

In one case, the line would be co-located with something that doesn't actually exist.

To pass through the Lecanto Sandhills, the FGT expansion would cut along a 400-foot-wide road right of way. But the right of way is for a road that may never be built: the controversial Citrus County leg of the Suncoast Parkway toll road, which state transportation officials have yet to put in their budget.

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Pipelines are safer than trucks, barges and tankers for shipping oil and gas. But Congress, federal regulators and watchdog groups last year began expressing concerns about the safety of the aging, infrequently inspected lines.

Last August, 11 people, including five children under the age of 6, were killed when a natural gas pipeline exploded at the Pecos River near Carlsbad, N.M. In January 2000, three people were killed in Garland, Texas, in a house explosion that occurred after natural gas leaked from a cracked 4-inch main in an alley behind the house.

Jim Hall, then the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates pipeline accidents, expressed the concerns in a 1999 speech to a pipeline trade organization: "The products in your lines -- if they escape -- pollute and kill."

FGT has had one dramatic disaster in the past decade. In 1998, lightning struck a gas compressor station in Perry, sending a ball of flame 600 feet high. Four firefighters were hurt, six homes were destroyed and about 100 people had to be evacuated.

If FGT suffers a similar disaster involving a line through a state forest, Hancock joked, "we'll get our prescribed burning done for the next 100 years."

FGT has another disaster on its record: an environmental one. In expanding its pipeline through Blackwater River State Forest seven years ago, FGT's contractors racked up more than 30 permit violations and $575,400 in fines.

Although state officials had worked with FGT before construction to minimize environmental damage, the contractors did not know about the agreements and did not heed warnings from the state, Hardin said.

"We had to say, 'We're going to stand here and watch you, and if you don't do it right, we're going to park our trucks in the way,' " Hardin said. "We had to assign a guy full time to monitor them."

FGT spokeswoman Taylor said the company has changed its construction procedures. The company now ensures that all its contractors are aware of environmental constraints and permit requirements and has stepped up its monitoring. Nevertheless, Hardin said the state will be watching closely to see whether FGT makes good on its promises.

"If they don't," Hardin said, "we'll pull our trucks in front of them."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk