Pipeline Peril
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In Washington, the politicians are hotly debating pipeline safety. They should take a look at what pipeline giant Energy Transfer has done to the people in Leon County. Lawyers for property owners say it’s one of the largest environmental disasters in the State of Texas.
“Yeah, I call the area behind me- I call it our Hiroshima,” said Michael Franks.
It obviously wasn’t a nuclear bomb that exploded on Michael Franks property, but it sure looked like it. This is generations of damage left by a ruptured crude oil pipeline.
“There was green patches of oil everywhere. And it’s hard to know even what you’re looking at, like where is it coming from,” explained Franks.
It was coming from a 70-year-old pipeline that ran under Michael’s 150-acre ranch in Leon County. That’s about thirty miles north of Huntsville Texas.
It’s called the West Texas Gulf Line, 26 inches in diameter. It runs 466 miles from Colorado City, Texas to the Texas Gulf Coast.
Hundreds if not thousands of barrels of oil poured out of the corroded pipeline down the once pristine pine creek, contaminating properties 6 miles downstream.
“One Sunday morning I was sitting out having coffee in here, these the cops came and they said not to burn anything and there’s atrocious smell,” said Nick Carter.
You can usually find Nick Carter in the Centerville Town Square, he’s the town’s barber and he owns 40 acres along Pine Creek.
“I actually met him because of the oil spill. Running around trying to see where all the oil was. Then I find out that he was a barber and I’m like, well I need a haircut,” said Miachel Franks.
“My horses drink out of that. I had to bring horses up to the front of the pasture and you know, it just messed up the creek. It was a fine creek, supposed to be a spring fed branch. It had a lot of oil in it,” said Carter.
“I’m still shell shocked by what we saw and what we encountered. The magnitude of it. This is actually the largest oil spill in the history of Leon County,” said Franks.
And the folks who finally came in to start cleaning it all up knew how bad it was too.
They knew who was responsible for the oil spill, and it was a company with an ugly environmental history already.
Energy transfer, a multi-billion-dollar pipeline company headquartered in Dallas.
The company bought the pipeline ten years ago, but the West Texas Gulf Pipeline had already had four previous incidents. Spilling they claimed thousands of barrels of oil.
But what happened in Leon County was clearly far worse.
“We consider this one of the largest environmental disasters in the state of Texas,” said Mauricio Guevara.
Nick, Michael, and more than a dozen of their neighbors are asking for millions of dollars in damages for this Leon County oil spill.
Think that’s bad? Check this out.
Just look at what happened in Pennsylvania.
A landslide. An explosion. Energy Transfer and its subsidiary hit with 43 million dollars in fines for systematically damaging drinking water and wetlands during five years of a pipeline construction there.
The company pled no contest to the felony criminal charges and paid just a fraction of the fines.
“Yeah, they’re convicted felons. Think about how extraordinary that is in America, the most pro-business, friendly, industrialized country in the world. For a corporate citizen to be a felon. I mean that takes a lot,” said Mauricio Guevera.
“We trusted them in the beginning. My family is in the oil and gas business, that’s what we do,” expressed Franks.
The company has always had an easement to maintain the pipeline on Michael’s property and he gave energy transfer full access to his property to fix the pipeline and clean up the mess.
“Every time they step foot on this property, they’re damaging something new.”
That was a long time ago, but Michael says cooperating with the pipeline giant has been a one-way street.
“They’ve been evasive to us. They’ve lied. They’ve actually done the opposite of what they said they would do in all of the cleanup,” expressed Franks.
“They’re not doing their job, and they probably haven’t been doing their job because it didn’t just start leaking,” said Carter.
Energy transfer told the railroad commission the spill from the corroded pipeline was at about 4 to 500 barrels of oil only, but admitted it had no flow meter on the pipeline to actually gauge the true release.
Landowners don’t buy it.
“We figure that the pipeline had probably a slow leak and had been seeping oil, potentially for years until it finally blew from the pressures,” said Franks.
And it apparently is still leaking nearly two years later.
“This is not just that they haven’t properly fixed the pipeline. The pipeline is still leaking more than 650 days after the initial breach,” explained Mauricio Guevera.
The spill was on a sensitive wetland, so the oil was primarily floating on the surface at first.
Energy transfer didn’t bring in pumper trucks to siphon off the bulk of the oil, they started digging.
Contaminated soil that Michael says was dumped without permission, where his family once grew organic pumpkins. Not anymore.
“You wake up one day and there’s this massive pile of contaminated trees and oil, just dumped into our pumpkin field. I mean I don’t even know how to process this,” expressed Franks.
And when it rains, Michael says the soil from that pumpkin field creates another hazard.
“It runs straight downhill right on top of our well house, where our water well is. So, they actually brought this contamination right to our water well,” said Franks.
Nothing but a stray weed has grown in two years. The oil is flowing in the pipeline again though, even though the cleanup is still going on. A temporary clamp was put on the pipeline, but the cleanup took a back seat.
“There’s black gold flowing through here. Turn the pipeline on, money, money, money flow this thing. Who knows how many millions of dollars are flowing right underneath this us as we speak here,” said Franks.
Theres another cost to this disaster, the road to Michael’s property now impassable to anything but trucks. We got stuck on that road too.
“They messed up our roads. They haven’t repaired anything. They haven’t brough back the hundreds of truckloads of our fertile soil. Haven’t brough any of it back to replace it or remediate any of this stuff,” explains Frank.
Energy transfer didn’t replace the pipe when they had it fully exposed two years ago, but just before Christmas the company declared it was suddenly an emergency.
But Michael had stopped allowing energy transfer to come through his front gate, so they took him to court just before Christmas.
These are just some of Energy Transfers’ lawyers, and like the company, they’re not talking.
The judge made Michael open his gate but warned the company they better do the right thing.
What Energy Transfer apparently wants is more money. It’s getting bigger with multi-billion-dollar acquisitions.
So, let’s compare that to what the company offered Michael Frank for destroying his land.
“And so we’re thinking, ok the oil pipeline company is going to take care of it and do good for the environment. A billion-dollar company that has done this much damage has offered us 13 thousand dollars. That’s their settlement. That’s actually laughable,” said Franks.
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