Palm Beach (FL) Post - January 18, 2003

Pipeline owner vague on break's cause
By Scott McCabe, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

LAKE WORTH -- The energy company that owns a pipeline that broke last week -- releasing noxious, flammable plumes 30 feet high and sending more than a dozen Lake Worth High School students to the hospital -- isn't exactly sure why the pipe broke.

After conducting its own investigation this week, Florida Public Utilities issued a press release shortly after 5 p.m. Friday explaining its findings.

"While it is impossible to re-create the exact conditions, Florida Public Utilities believes that unusual external loads along Lake Osborne Drive adversely affected the underground gas main," spokesman Marc Schneidermann said in the release.

The company would not communicate with the newspaper other than in press releases, Schneidermann said.

But those familiar with pipelines were unimpressed with the company's explanation for the rupture that buckled the asphalt on Lake Osborne Drive, sending the flammable vapor into the air, yards away from Tri-Rail tracks, Interstate 95 and the city power plant.

Gas to the broken pipe was shut off about an hour after the leak was discovered, but a small spark could have caused an explosion in the heavily trafficked area that would have been devastating, Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue workers said.

Richard Kuprewicz, a Redmond, Wash.-based pipeline consultant, said the term "unusual external loads" is euphemistic.

"That's is a catch-all phrase in the industry -- the earth was moved, the pipe was crushed," he said, "but basically, it means they have issues."

It simply raises more questions, he said. Why was the line not properly installed to handle the load and what caused the unusual external loads?

Bob Rackleff, president of the National Pipeline Reform Coalition, voiced similar views.

"I'm a little mystified by their reason myself, that's kind of a (lame) excuse," said Rackleff, who's also a Leon County Commissioner in Tallahassee.

He said the onus is on the utility to make sure the pipe is designed to handle external loads, to know what is causing the unusual ones and to monitor the line.

Simple engineering -- putting the line deeper, using a thicker pipe, double-piping or designing a way to distribute the pressure of the traffic -- should have prevented the line from rupturing, he said.

Industry officials have said the leading cause of pipeline leaks is from an outside source, such as construction crews or traffic accidents. The second leading cause is corrosion.

The roughly 1 1/2 -mile pipe -- part of the 1,358 miles of gas lines Florida Public Utilities owns throughout the state -- wraps around Lake Osborne and ends at the Lake Worth Power Plant.

The pipe was installed in 1971 to serve the plant and was in use until about a year ago, when a new 14-inch pipe was installed for the plant, Schneidermann said last week. The 10-inch pipe has been in standby mode for the past year, carrying 250 pounds of natural gas per square inch but not supplying customers or other lines.

Lake Worth fire and police departments and Florida Highway Patrol responded after city dispatchers received a report Jan. 10 of a strange odor around Lake Worth High.

Tri-Rail officials stopped train service to the area and evacuated the Lake Worth station. Florida Power & Light workers and city power plant workers prepared to shut power to overhead lines and transformers near the leak while Florida Public Utilities workers waited for clearance from firefighters to approach the shutoff valve to the pipe.

At Lake Worth High, fire-rescue officials evacuated about 800 students from the southeast side of campus. The school has 3,100 students, and its faculty and staff number almost 200.

In the wake of a series of pipeline accidents in other parts of the country and the revelation of illegal accounting practices at Enron, which operates the Florida Gas Transmission pipeline, critics have raised alarm about pipeline maintenance and regulation.

The federal Office of Pipeline Safety in Washington relies too heavily on industry cooperation, said Kuprewicz, who advises energy companies and local governments about safe pipeline operation.