Thursday, May 15, 2008

Rialto City Council gives chilly reception to fuel pipeline proposal (Press Enterprise May 6, 2008)

BS Ranch Perspective:

My feelings on this is that the Gas Line should have been proposed thought as a closed session and not such a public affair, now there is a problem of a terror situation where some Nimrod wants to make a name for himself and blow up the line etc, But, we cannot go back and re-light the candle. To reroute the pipe line only thought an Industrial area, would only move the pipeline approximately fifteen hundred feet to Locust Ave. If there was an accidental Explosion of that pipeline the street of Linden would be effected, it might not be as much, but it would still be effected, especially of the falling waist that is unburned from the gas the spouts from the pipeline. Then in the more then thirty years that they have had these pipe lines they have had only one, ONE, incident, where the pipe burst, & that was caused because of a derailed Train!!

BS Ranch




Rialto City Council gives chilly reception to fuel pipeline proposal



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10:00 PM PDT on Tuesday, May 6, 2008
By MARY BENDER
The Press-Enterprise

RIALTO - The Texas company that wants to expand its 233-mile, Rialto-to-Las Vegas fuel pipeline should choose a route far from residential neighborhoods and must guarantee the safety of the drinking water supply, city leaders said Tuesday night.

A representative of Houston-based Kinder Morgan Energy Partners came to the Rialto City Council meeting to outline the company's plan to add a 16-inch-diameter underground pipeline to its existing system, called the CalNev Pipeline.

Currently, Kinder Morgan owns and operates a 14-inch-diameter and an 8-inch-diameter pipeline, both of which originate at a tank farm at 2359 S. Riverside Ave., south of Interstate 10. The pipelines transport "refined petroleum products," including jet fuel, diesel and gasoline, said Allan Campbell, the company's director of project permitting.

Once the largest pipeline is built, the smallest would be taken out of service, Campbell told the City Council. Kinder Morgan wants to expand CalNev's capacity to supply more aviation fuel to McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, based on projections that passenger travel will increase significantly in the next 20 years.

Rialto council members gave the proposal a rather chilly reception.

"I'm adamantly opposed to your project," Councilman Ed Scott said. "Your (company's) maintenance and safety record is less than stellar."

The CalNev Pipeline exploded in May 1989 along Duffy Street in San Bernardino, about two weeks after it was damaged in a train derailment. Two people were killed and 31 injured in that accident. Kinder Morgan didn't own the pipeline then.

Scott outlined his fears that any leak of fuel from the pipeline could pollute Rialto's drinking water supply, which already is tainted with the chemical perchlorate.

The city has spent millions of dollars over the years outfitting its wells with equipment that removes perchlorate -- and Rialto is trying to get the businesses and governments that allegedly polluted the water decades ago to help pay for the cleanup.

"You have the potential for contaminating the drinking water for 100,000 residents of our community," Scott said.

Further, the councilman told Campbell that Kinder Morgan's franchise agreement with Rialto is "old and archaic," and that the company ought to be a good corporate citizen and renegotiate it.

The pact, believed to have been executed in the 1960s, pays Rialto $193 per year to run the fuel pipeline several miles through town, Mike Story, the city's director of development services, told the council. Outside the meeting, Story said the franchise agreement expires in 2018.

The current pipeline runs near some homes and schools. Its route along Linden Avenue goes directly past Wilmer Amina Carter High School. Scott wondered aloud how the Rialto Unified School District received permission to build the school next to the pipeline.

Rialto resident Patty Salas has lived on Linden Avenue, directly across the street from Carter High, for 35 years. She told the council that the city should insist on the 16-inch pipeline being built only through industrial areas, away from residential neighborhoods.

Reach Mary Bender at 909-806-3056 or mbender@PE.com