In an effort
to meet growing demands for natural gas in South Florida, two companies are
planning to build underwater pipelines to transport natural gas from the Bahamas
to the region. The planned construction would drill underneath the coral reefs
that lie between the islands and the state. Although scientists and conservationists
have expressed concerns about the impact of the pipelines on the reef system,
the Florida Cabinet voted to approve both projects in April.
Staghorn coral live in seagrass in the Florida Keys Marine National Sanctuary.
Two companies are planning to construct underwater pipelines carrying natural
gas through a stretch of coral reef north of the sanctuary and down to the Bahamas.
Courtesy of the Florida Keys Marine National Sanctuary.
There is little debate that Florida’s fragile coral reefs, like most around
the world, are in peril — rising sea-surface temperatures, pollution, overfishing,
and damage from divers and boaters all threaten the most extensive living coral
reef system in North America. The contested stretch is north of the Florida
Keys National Marine Sanctuary and is known as the southeast Florida reef tract.
It consists of three reef lines that grew between 3,000 and 9,000 years ago.
The coral cover on these reefs averages only 2 to 6 percent — compared
to recent estimates of 15 to 20 percent in the reefs of the Florida Keys. Although
no longer actively growing, they are still home to a rich flora and fauna, including
one type of coral, Acropora cervicornis, which is currently under consideration
for the endangered species list.
“These reefs are pretty and valuable,” says Bernhard Riegl, associate
professor at Nova Southeastern University, “but because they are at the
northern end of their range, they are not as lush and diverse as the reefs of
the lower Keys and Caribbean.” And conservationists and federal and state
officials disagree over whether the pipelines will pose significant danger to
these reefs.
Nonetheless, after more than two years of review by an interagency panel that
included federal, state and county officials, AES Ocean Express LLC and Tractebel
Calypso are each close to getting the green light for pipeline construction
underneath the reef. Both projects have already received final approvals from
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; with the state cabinet’s approval,
Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) will issue its
own permit. “The permitting process follows the mantra: ‘avoid, minimize,
mitigate,’” says Jayne Bergstrom, permitting manager of FDEP’s
Southeast District.
The pipeline companies will use horizontal directional drilling under the reefs
on the Florida side; farther offshore, the pipelines will rest directly on the
seafloor. The federal environmental impact statement reports that damage to
the reefs during pipeline construction would be minimal.
“We were very tough — we were not easy at all,” Bergstrom says.
“There are no clear-cut coral reef protection statutes in the state of
Florida; there’s nothing that says ‘thou shalt not touch coral.’”
To protect the corals, she says, the state built in extra conditions to the
permitting process, including doubling the cost of mitigation for impacts covered
in the permits and requiring an additional $5 million bond in case of accidental
impacts to the reef. The state also lowered its turbidity threshold for the
projects, to reduce stress on the corals.
Still, environmentalist groups worry about the effects of the construction on
the reef. Dangers to the reef include “frac-outs” (where bentonite
mud used to lubricate the drill is released during drilling) and failed pullback
of the pipeline into the drill hole. Mechanical damage is also a major concern,
says Dan Clark, president of Cry of the Water, a reef activist group. “Inadvertent
anchor damage, vessels dragging lines — if you work around fragile coral
reefs, these things are going to happen,” he says. Additional damage could
result from the methods proposed by each company to bring in the pipeline once
the holes are drilled.
“If they’re going to have a gas pipeline, the thing to do is to have
it be environmentally safe,” says Ray McAllister, a professor emeritus
of ocean engineering at Florida Atlantic University. McAllister and Clark both
say that they would like to see more protection measures in place, including
requiring a nearshore shutoff valve in case of gas leaks and using natural gaps
in the farthest offshore reef to bring in the pipelines for construction, rather
than floating or dragging them in.
Final approval of both projects is still pending from the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers and the Bahamian government. Nonetheless, both projects will likely
obtain approval, with pipeline construction beginning by the end of this year.
“The permitting process is pretty stringent,” Riegl says. “How
worried you are depends on how much you believe in it.”
Carolyn Gramling
Geotimes contributing writer
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