Impacts of Proposed Oil Pipeline Through Area Criticized in Report

Although widely heralded as a safe alternative to tankers, a proposed pipeline snaking through Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties would disrupt wetlands, uproot Chumash burial grounds and create other environmental problems, according to a report released Monday.

In lieu of the $215-million Pacific Pipeline, the environmental impact report suggested it would be “environmentally superior” to funnel oil from Santa Barbara’s offshore fields to Los Angeles refineries through existing pipelines that run through Kern, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

Pumping oil through this circuitous route would create fewer new health and environmental risks because it would require no new construction.

But it would be more expensive than using a more-direct pipeline proposed to hug the coast from northern Santa Barbara County to Ventura, jog inland along the Santa Clara River to Santa Clarita and then head down through Los Angeles to refineries in Wilmington.

An alternate route, deemed more environmentally damaging in the report, would venture south from Ventura though Oxnard, Simi Valley and Burbank before turning toward the refineries in the southernmost section of Los Angeles.

Oil companies have long pressed to be able to ship their crude in the cheapest manner possible. Their preference has always been to use ocean-going tankers.

After years of impasse, the California Coastal Commission granted temporary permission to use tankers until Jan. 1, 1996, but has ordered oil companies to gradually switch to the safer method of pumping oil overland through a pipeline.

Transporting oil through the current overland route costs about $4 per barrel, whereas shipping by tanker costs about $1.75, said G. Michael Marcy, a Chevron spokesman. Pacific Pipeline has promised to keep its rate at $1.95 a barrel.

Chevron, Exxon and Texaco are helping to finance the proposed Pacific Pipeline, six years after a similar plan to lay a pipeline down the coast foundered amid public opposition.

“We’re more than happy to be in any pipeline that’s cost-competitive,” Chevron’s Marcy said. “We think Pacific Pipeline is clearly in the lead of all the alternatives out there.”

When measured against increased shipping, building the Pacific Pipeline could be considered an environmentally sound step, the impact report said.

While enumerating pages of detrimental effects caused by building a new pipeline, the report acknowledged that sticking to existing routes would carry substantial risks as well.

In a recent reminder of those risks, a 43-year-old pipeline owned by Atlantic Richfield Co. ruptured in early April, spilling 100,000 gallons of crude oil onto Interstate 5 and down a Kern County creek bed.

The pipelines recommended for use in the impact report range from 5 to 50 years old, and some do not have state-of-the-art safety devices, said Martha Sullivan, an analyst with the Public Utilities Commission, which must certify the report.

In contrast, the Pacific Pipeline would have a safety valve every few miles to cut off the flow of oil in the event of a spill, said Norman L. Rooney, president of Pacific Pipeline System Inc.

Stretching only 171 miles, the Pacific Pipeline would be significantly shorter than the 540 miles of existing lines, so pumping oil to the refineries would take less energy.

Even more important, the risk of ruptures increases with every mile of pipeline, so the Pacific project would be much less likely to cause a spill than the existing route, the report noted.

“If you add up the pros and cons, we’re head and shoulders above the existing pipelines,” Pacific Pipeline’s Rooney said. “Southern California is interlaced with numerous old, old lines, and ours would be a totally new line. It’s like comparing a Model T to a Maserati.”

But operators of the existing lines bristled at the suggestion that their pipelines are less safe.

“In general, a longer pipeline perhaps might correlate to a higher risk, but . . . we’re not having any problems,” said Mike Madden, a manager at the Santa Barbara office of All-American Pipelines, which operates most of the route that the report recommended for overland transport.

“Our pipeline was built between 1985 and 1990, it is state of the art and it’s already in the ground and operational, so you don’t have any construction-related impact,” Madden said in defense of the existing system.

Monday’s release of the draft impact report, prepared by the Aspen Environmental Group of Agoura Hills, signals the start of what is expected to be an intense debate about the Pacific Pipeline project.

A 45-day public comment period, including a May 10 workshop and June 17 hearing in the Ventura County Administration Building, will allow residents to express their concerns.

Construction of the pipeline would pollute the air, disturb sacred Chumash sites, mar scenic vistas and create noise, the report stated. Although the pipeline would create up to 600 jobs during the 12-month building period, the report forecast as disadvantages the “short-term, but significant demands on housing and school districts” that an influx of workers would create.

Most of the pipeline would follow heavily traveled highways, along railroad rights of way, so biological impacts would be relatively minimal, the report stated.

Yet once completed, the pipeline would cross or pass adjacent to 157 streams or wetlands, disturbing seven acres of stream bottom and riparian corridor. Up to seven amphibian and reptile species could suffer, and nesting sites, riparian habitat and native vegetation could be destroyed if the pipeline ruptured in a delicate area, according to the report.

After the environmental trauma of construction, the Pacific Pipeline would create the least long-term damage, particularly to air quality.

Most existing pipelines are equipped with pollution-spewing heating stations along the way. Santa Barbara crude is so viscous that it will not flow through pipelines unless it is heated or diluted with thinner oil.

To eliminate the need for emission-prone heating stations, the Pacific Pipeline would be insulated. Also, its pumping stations would be electric rather than fueled by air-fouling gas and oil, Sullivan said.

Representatives from several environmental groups declined to comment on the report until they had studied it.

But they reiterated their fervent opposition to shipping oil by tanker--and suggested they would be willing to see the Pacific Pipeline built, despite its detrimental effects, if it would encourage oil companies to transport their crude over land instead of by sea.

“It’s a ticklish situation,” said Henry Feniger, president of Get Oil Out, a group that has been lobbying since 1969 against oil tankers.

“The pipeline may mean eliminating wetlands or other short-term destruction, but maybe it will have a good long-term effect,” he said. “Pipelines are a great deal safer than shipping by tanker. It’s a tough call.”