Sabal Trail: Pipeline brings gas, protests
A pipe as big around as a semi-truck tire is on the verge of pumping natural gas under high pressure from Alabama, across a corner of Georgia, and through Florida’s swamps, ranches, suburbia and a tourist strip to the heart of Central Florida.
To big utility companies, the 515-mile, $3.2 billion Sabal Trail pipeline is an essential artery, the cleanest, cheapest and safest way to guarantee aroundthe-clock electricity for more than a million homes in Florida.
For environmentalists who have staged weekly protests, the steel pipe armored in green plastic is a threat to the planet’s health on par with the reviled Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines in the works. And safety advocates warn that pipes can fail, and when they do, gas leaks can injure or even kill.
Then there are people like Jorge Rosario, who isn’t as caught up in the pipeline politics as he is with the rumbling that shook the walls of his house as
workers constructed Sabal Trail just feet from his backyard.
“There were weeks that went by when we couldn’t sleep in the morning,” said Rosario, 50, from a neighborhood of manufactured homes just west of U.S. Highway 192 near Kissimmee.
He and his neighbors wondered what the noisy construction was about. New apartments? Another road? The long-awaited extension of SunRail or some other railroad?
He learned from a reporter that it was a natural gas pipeline.
“No one informed anyone of anything at all,” he said. “Natural gas can cause a very substantialsized explosion if something goes wrong. It just takes a small mistake and people can get hurt.”
Sabal Trail joins more than 5,000 miles of large natural gas transmission lines already underground in Florida. Those end in hubs that spur a network of some 40,000 miles of smaller underground pipes that deliver gas to homes and businesses throughout the state; 500 miles of buried pipe in Florida are dedicated to hazardous liquids such as jet fuel or other petroleum products.
With the petroleum industry’s embrace of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, natural gas has become the nation’s and, far and away, Florida’s top choice for generating electricity.
Natural gas is what feeds the blue flame of a kitchen stove. It also fuels the massive engines inside a fleet of power plants in the state.
The new Sabal line, starting this summer, each day will import as much as 1.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas, or enough to fill the Superdome in New Orleans nearly 10 times with the gaseous fossil fuel, to feed Duke Energy Florida and Florida Power & Light Co. electric plants.
Pumping all that gas through a pipe 36 inches wide will require a network of factory-like compressor stations to maintain a pressure of as much as 1,456 pounds per square inch.
Does pipeline pose any risks?
Even without a spark of ignition, that tremendous pressure alone is capable of blowing a pipe apart.
That makes a pipeline much like a car’s automatic transmission or the processor chip in an iPhone — rarely seen and hardly noticed until something goes wrong.
“The chance of the pipeline failing in any one spot is really, really low,” said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit created in the wake of a deadly pipeline failure in Washington in 1999 that now advocates for ways to increase pipeline safety. “If it were to happen in the wrong spot, it can be a really huge tragedy like we’ve seen in a few places around the country.”
One of the most deadly recent accidents occurred in San Bruno, Calif., just outside San Francisco in 2010, when a steel 30-inch natural gas pipeline ruptured and ignited a giant fireball, killing eight people and destroying 38 homes.
An investigation found that pipeline owner Pacific Gas and Electric Company had not properly maintained the pipeline or monitored it for safety.
The number of onshore gas transmission line incidents reported to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration as “significant” has trended up over the last two decades. In 1997, there were 26 incidents across the country that injured five and killed one. Last year, there were 50 incidents that caused three deaths and three injuries.
Florida hasn’t seen any fatalities from large gas transmission lines during the last 20 years.
But in 2009, three people were injured when an 18-inch natural gas pipeline owned by Florida Gas Transmission Co. ruptured, but did not catch fire, early one morning about six miles south of Palm City. A 106-foot section of the pipe erupted, leaving a crater between Interstate 95 and the Florida Turnpike, according to a National Transportation Safety Board investigation.
A nearby neighborhood was evacuated and a high school was closed for the day as a result of the rupture.
More common across the country and in Florida are injuries related to the smaller distribution lines that deliver gas to homes and businesses.
Two people have lost their lives in Florida in the last two decades in accidents involving the smaller lines, including one in Orange County in 2000 and a second in Pensacola in 2006, according to the federal database. Thirteen people have been injured as a result of such accidents in the last 20 years.
A spokeswoman said Sabal Trail is using the newest technology to both construct the pipe and inspect it over time.
But the potential for danger lurking underground can’t be dismissed entirely, Weimer said.
A study by the Pipeline Safety Trust showed that pipelines installed after 2010 are failing at a higher rate than older lines, often because the lines aren’t welded together properly or other quality control problems that have emerged as pipeline construction has ramped up across the country.
“[Sabal Trail] is a pretty high-pressure pipeline,” Weimer said. “If it should fail for whatever reason or gets hit with a backhoe, just the force of gas coming out of the pipeline could be enough to create a spark.”
The highest-risk danger zone — or in pipeline industry parlance, the “potential impact radius” — surrounding Sabal Trail is 948 feet or about two and a half football fields.
Sabal spokeswoman Andrea Grover said the highstrength carbon pipe, produced in Panama City and Mobile, Ala., is coated under high temperature with epoxy on the outside and, while not required, also inside the pipe to prevent corrosion.
“Our safety programs are designed to prevent pipeline failures, detect anomalies, perform repairs and often exceed regulatory requirements,” she said.
Pipeline notices done 3 years ago
When it came to public outreach, Sabal Trail followed the guidelines set by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for notifying landowners and others of plans for the pipeline and also held open houses.
The commission says it notified more than 5,800 people, including landowners, elected officials and other interested groups in 2014. It also held public meetings and considered more than 1,000 letters and comments before it granted approval for construction to begin last year.
Mike Steigerwald, the city manager in Kissimmee, said federal pipeline projects can remain fairly stealthy despite the official notifications.
“In this particular situation, I felt like we learned about it late,” he said.
And he should know. Kissimmee, home to more than 65,000 people, and north Osceola County have a number of gas and fuel pipelines under foot.
That means constant coordination, he said, with private utilities during construction projects. Excavation work is a common cause of pipeline damage, which is why everyone from big developers to homeowners installing a new fence are encouraged to call 811 before they dig. The statewide program helps people avoid damaging cable lines, pipes and other utilities.
“It’s like this is the convergence of pipelines in the state of Florida,” Steigerwald said.
Over time, as the pipes age and, possibly, become more prone to problems, that’s a reality Kissimmee will need to monitor, he said.
“I know the pipe is really deep and the likelihood of something happening is low,” he said. “Thirty years down the road, 50 years down the road, my successors are going to have to deal with that.”
Florida’s first major natural gas pipeline arrived a half-century ago, when the Florida Gas Transmission line was built across the Panhandle into the state’s peninsula.
In 2002, construction was completed for a pipeline known as Gulfstream, which runs from Alabama under the Gulf of Mexico to Florida.
Since then, the advent of fracking has created demand for more pipelines.
The U.S. grew to be the world’s largest producer of natural gas. Florida, shying away from dirtier coal and costlier nuclear energy, uses more natural gas to generate electricity than any other state besides petroleum-rich Texas.
The state’s largest utility,
FPL, began to press a decade ago to build a third pipeline, warning that the existing pipelines were nearing full capacity and were vulnerable to disruptions from hurricanes or accidents.
Ultimately, FPL’s parent, NextEra Energy, teamed with pipeline giant Spectra Energy, and later with Duke Energy, to form the Sabal Trail Transmission.
The two utilities will be the main buyers of the gas that is set to begin pulsing through the line as early as this summer.
NextEra also is building a $550 million pipeline, called Florida Southeast Connection, that will link with the Sabal pipe in Osceola County and run 126 miles to FPL’s power plants in Martin County.
Eventually, the cost for the utilities to receive gas through the new pipelines will show up on the bills of Duke and FPL customers, although neither utility can say yet how much that monthly charge will be.
Even before Sabal Trail came to life, utility and energy experts had been warning that Florida relies too heavily on natural gas. A decade ago, natural gas produced 39 percent of Florida’s electricity; today it produces more than 60 percent.
Environmental support wavers
That lopsided portfolio has raised alarm among some environmental groups.
The Sierra Club has pivoted from its earlier support for natural gas, now calling it a disaster on several fronts: for reports that fracking pollutes water and triggers earthquakes; for the potential danger posed by pipelines; and for undermining renewable energy efforts.
Sierra’s national staff is trying to stop Sabal Trail with a lawsuit, though the pipe is nearly complete. That hasn’t stopped state members of the group from campaigning to turn public opinion against the pipe and fracking.
Demonstrators say they feel emboldened by the political skirmishes and sometimes-violent protests against construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.
Sabal protesters have been arrested, including two who lodged themselves inside a stretch of pipe earlier this year.
A month ago, deputies in Citrus County shot and killed a man who they say fired at the pipeline in Dunnellon with a rifle before leading police on a chase.
A small band of environmentalists turned out last week along a busy road in Marion County where a compressor station is under construction.
The group, matched in numbers by sheriff ’s deputies, wildlife officers and pipeline security personnel, gathered both as a protest and as a memorial for the man who was shot.
“We are basically at the end of this fossil fuel empire and we need to transition and stop relying on fossil fuels,” said Panagioti Tsolkas, an organizer of the demonstrations. “The protests will continue even after the gas is turned on. It’s never too late to turn it off.”
Other environmental groups are varied in their strength of opposition to Sabal Trail.
The WWALS Watershed Coalition, which advocates for protection of Florida and Georgia rivers, has staunchly opposed nearly every aspect of Sabal Trail, which crosses under the Suwannee, Santa Fe and many other rivers.
Coalition spokesman John Quarterman called the pipeline a profit bonanza for private companies and a boondoggle for utility customers.
The Florida Defenders of the Environment based in Gainesville chose not to take a formal position on Sabal Trail, but warned its members of the risk it poses.
“Our tourism tax base is dangerously close to tanking,” said group director Steve Robitaille. “All it will take is one exploding pipeline, one offshore oil spill, or one fracking-contaminated aquifer.”
Audubon Florida has not endorsed Sabal Trail but has been supportive of FPL’s use of natural gas.
“Gas is better on air emissions than any other fuel,” said Charles Lee, the conservation group’s advocacy director.
The pipeline has already altered thousands of acres of wetlands, forests and other landscapes.
In south Lake County, where the pipeline crosses the Green Swamp, cypress wetlands in its path were left as muddy flats. The pipeline also runs through ranches such as that of David Bridges, where earth dug up to lay the pipe already blends back in with surrounding pasture.
Bridges said that the builders did a good job, but he wasn’t happy Sabal Trail chose his property; nor did he think he was compensated enough by the pipeline builders for the intrusion.
He would not say how much he was paid by Sabal Trail; the company also declined to disclose how much it has paid to cross more than 2,300 tracts. Under its federal permit, Sabal Trail has authority to build on private land.
Most of the landowners settled, but some are still arguing in court over dollar amounts.
“We are the ones who have to live with it now,” Bridges said.
“If it [pipeline failure] were to happen in the wrong spot, it can be a really huge tragedy like we’ve seen in a few places around the country.” Carl Weimer, executive director of the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust