County residents uneasy about doubling heavy-crude pipeline capacity

Area residents gathered Thursday to learn more about an aging, heavy-crude pipeline running through their backyards that could double in capacity if a second, parallel line is built.

The meeting, which was organized by residents and took place at the O.E. Carlyle Civic Center in Farmersville, attracted a full house consisting of landowners, city officials, environmental activists and county representatives.

Attendees wanted to know more about the company behind the venture, Enbridge, Inc. The Canadian corporation purchased the Seaway Pipeline in 2011 from ConocoPhillips. In May 2012, it re-purposed the 36-year-old line to reverse its flow direction, allowing it to transport crude oil from Cushing, Okla. to coastal refineries near Houston. Of the many communities in between, the line runs through Grayson, Collin, Rockwall and Kaufman counties.

In Farmersville, the Seaway Pipeline runs parallel with U.S. 78 north of town and runs within a mile of the town's junior high and high schools, as well as through many residential properties.

In reversed service, the Seaway Pipeline line has a capacity of 150,000 to 180,000 barrels per day (BPD). By early 2013, a twin line running parallel with the existing line is expected to increase Seaway's capacity to about 400,000 BPD of crude oil, according to the website for Seaway Crude Pipeline Company LLC, which is the 50/50 joint venture between Enbridge and Enterprise Products Partners LP.

"This is definitely not a political meeting," Farmersville Mayor Pro Tem Jim Foy said. "We're not opposed to pipelines in general, we're simply concerned about the safety of this particular pipeline that runs through Farmersville."

Rita Beving of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., outlined the risks behind transporting the diluted bitumen, or tar sands crude, and how it could threaten local wells and waterways, including Lake Lavon.

"It's not your granddaddy's West Texas crude," Beving said. "Tar sands is mined, it's not drilled like conventional crude. So it actually looks like asphalt."

To push the solid material through a pipeline, it is mixed with heavy dilutants, is 70 times more viscous and up to 20 times more acidic than conventional crude, Beving said. Tar sands is also highly corrosive due to its sandy nature, so the wear and tear on a pipeline due to pumping at high pressure, coupled with high heat due to friction in the line of up to 158 degrees, increases the potential for rupture, Beving said.

"It's like pushing peanut butter through a pipeline," she said.

Beving also emphasized Enbridge's not-so-favorable reputation.

In July 2010, Beving said, an Enbridge tar sands pipeline ruptured, spilling more than 1 million gallons of diluted bitumen into Michigan's Kalamazoo watershed, making it the largest onshore spill in U.S. history. The company is still recovering from the spill, as the EPA directed the company to perform further cleanup efforts earlier this month. To date, the spill has caused $850 million in damages, Beving said.

The Michigan disaster involved a 43-year-old pipeline similar to the one being used in Texas, said Beving, who said she was afraid there could be potential for a similar disaster in Collin County.

"There are risks for what gets airborne as well as what goes into the water," Beving said. "And when it does hit water ... the heavier parts are going to sink like a stone in a river. It's like paving a creek."

Milton Titus resides just outside of Farmersville near Lake Lavon and is angered by the surveyor flags in his yard. He never gave permission for anyone to come onto his land but said he knows someone climbed his fence while he wasn't looking. With the existing pipeline going through his property, Titus has already seen warning signs and is afraid a second line will degrade his property even more.

"The water comes in and it's already carved out the existing pipeline before," Titus said. "People ask me, 'What's that?' and I say, 'Sludge.' I can only imagine what another line is going to do to my property value."

Concerns among the Farmersville City Council began with the reversal of the pipeline because of the material it would be transporting and their fear that few safety inspections had been done on the aging pipe to ensure it could carry the tar sands crude.

Foy said he could not say whether Enbridge has begun transporting tar sand crude. He met with Enbridge representatives Thursday afternoon and said he was told even they did not know what was currently going through the pipeline. Company representatives were notified of Thursday's public meeting but were not in attendance. Foy said representatives are expected to answer questions on the project at the city council's next meeting on Nov. 13.

"These are big issues," Beving said. "But it just takes a few people getting it started before you can make it into something bigger to protect your community."

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