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A regulatory group says the project would have "limited adverse environmental impact.''
By JAMES THORNER
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 1, 2000
Buccaneer Gas Pipeline Co. has cleared one of its biggest regulatory hurdles to building a 674-mile natural gas transmission line from Alabama to Florida.
On Thursday, after about eight months of scrutinizing the pipeline route, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released a 600-page "draft environmental impact statement" for the project.
FERC said Buccaneer would have a "limited adverse environmental impact" on the communities through which it would pass, including 46 miles of Pasco County from Anclote to Zephyrhills.
Save for the eastern indigo snake, none of the 27 federally endangered or threatened species suspected of living along the proposed route would suffer from the pipeline, FERC said.
"If you look at the entire route across the state of Florida, 79 percent of it was co-located with existing utilities, which bodes well from an environmental standpoint," Buccaneer project manager Brian O'Higgins said.
But what's good news for the gas industry is arguably bad news for Pasco critics of the pipeline. FERC rejected a county proposal to shift the route away from the Land O'Lakes commercial district on State Road 54.
Pasco, wary of burying a 36-inch pipeline along a highway used by thousands of cars each day, pitched two alternative routes through Land O'Lakes, one north of SR 54, the other south of the highway along County Line Road.
In rejecting the alternative routes, FERC's report reads, "None were determined to offer environmental advantages over the route proposed and were eliminated from further consideration."
"It's real disappointing," said Bob Allen, a Land O'Lakes activist who has attacked the pipeline as an accident waiting to happen. "But I'm not surprised."
The pipeline would come ashore near the Anclote River, brush the Gulf Trace neighborhood in Holiday and roughly parallel SR 54 through Odessa and Land O'Lakes.
At 20 Mile Level Road, the corridor turns to shadow the future route of State Road 56 through Wesley Chapel and Zephyrhills, exiting the county after crossing the Hillsborough River in Crystal Springs.
On the same day it issued the environmental statement for Buccaneer, FERC also released a report for the Gulfstream Pipeline Project, Buccaneer's biggest competitor in the multibillion-dollar race to lay another gas transmission pipe into Florida.
Buccaneer's pipeline would run 674 miles from Mobile, Ala., to near Cape Canaveral. Gulfstream's would run 744 miles from Mississippi and Alabama to near Lake Okeechobee.
Both would pass under the Gulf of Mexico, Buccaneer coming ashore in Pasco, Gulfstream in Manatee County.
Despite earlier speculation that the federal government would permit only one of the two competitors to build, FERC officials said both projects are viable.
"The commission has developed a policy that the market will choose the winner," FERC spokeswoman Tamara Young Allen said. "That's been our policy since the mid 1980s."
FERC's decision to give Buccaneer a relatively clean bill of health complicates the position of Pasco, where officials have split over whether to fight or embrace the project.
On one hand, Pasco hungers for the estimated $3-million in yearly taxes from the pipeline. On the other, the county worries about the threat of a pipeline explosion.
Although county commissioners voted May 16 to oppose the project, county staffers have negotiated a tentative settlement with Buccaneer.
The agreement -- Buccaneer would give Pasco $565,000 and other concessions in exchange for Pasco dropping its opposition -- hangs in limbo until discussions at Wednesday's commissioners meeting.
County Commissioner Pat Mulieri publicly slammed county attorney Robert Sumner last week for negotiating without the commissioners' consent.
In light of Mulieri's criticism, Sumner was reluctant Thursday to support the settlement.
"I'm not recommending any course of action," Sumner said. "The commissioners may wish to oppose the project, they may wish to settle or they may seek to negotiate themselves."
The agreement still stands as far as Buccaneer is concerned. "At this point, the offer's still good," O'Higgins said Thursday.
The next step in the approval process is a series of public hearings about the environmental report, including a 7 p.m. meeting on Sept. 27 at the Land O'Lakes Community Center on U.S. 41.
Buccaneer, a joint effort of the Williams Corp. and Duke Energy Corp., expects to have a final environmental impact statement in hand before Christmas.
Construction is scheduled to start in January in Alabama and in August in Florida. Gas would start flowing in April 2002, serving power plants eager for cleaner-burning fuel.