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Tampa Residents To Hear Plans For Fuel Pipeline

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By Mark Holan

Published: October 3, 2007

TAMPA - Representatives of a Houston pipeline company are scheduled tonight to outline plans for a jet fuel pipeline running through central Tampa neighborhoods to Tampa International Airport.

The meeting with residents is at 6 p.m. at Stetson University College of Law, 1700 N. Tampa St.

Kinder Morgan's 85-mile fuel pipeline from the Port of Tampa to Orlando could draw as much interest, though, as its proposed 9-mile pipeline from the port to TIA.

The buried 10-inch-diameter pipeline ruptured shortly before midnight Sept. 15, 2005, gushing more than 37,000 gallons of diesel fuel near Charles Wilkinson Lane and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard west of Plant City.

A dozen homes within a 3-acre area were evacuated. Residents walked out of their neighborhood because of concern that starting a car might spark an explosion.

The rupture got a quick burst of media attention, when the spill was estimated at 1,100 gallons, and then faded from attention. Cleanup efforts continue more than two years later. With Kinder Morgan proposing a Tampa pipeline, some Plant City residents are speaking up about their experience.

"I want the people of Tampa to know it's not as rosy as they paint the picture," said former Plant City Mayor Terry Ballard, who owns a storage business next to the spill site. "People need to know what could happen."

Jerry Aycock, Kinder Morgan's remediation and emergency response director, said his company thinks the pipeline was nicked by somebody else's workers.

"There are lots of fiber-optic cables in the area," he said during a phone interview today. "There's practically no chance of us being able to trace that back."

More than 14,000 gallons of polluted groundwater and 15,000 tons of contaminated soil were removed from the site, with heavy equipment digging out some areas to about 8-feet deep, according to records and residents' photos.

Kinder Morgan built a small water treatment system on Ballard's property that continues to clean polluted groundwater. The company also plans in the coming year to make chemical and biological injections into the soil to break apart and disintegrate pockets of diesel fuel that could not be removed during the original cleanup, Aycock said.

He said the cleanup could take until at least 2010 and cost an estimated $6 million to $7 million, including the purchase of one property and settlements with residents. The company and some property owners said they are prohibited from discussing the settlement amount.

Ballard said he has flooding problems at his storage business after Kinder Morgan contractors repaved his property. But he isn't totally against fuel pipelines.

"It's probably saved a lot of lives by keeping tanker-trucks off Interstate 4," he said.

Reporter Mark Holan can be reached at (813) 835-2102 or mholan@tampatrib.com.

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