LITTLE ROCK — One of the nation’s main arteries for transporting oil snakes through the Lake Maumelle watershed underground, crossing the Maumelle River and other tributaries to the lake that provides the region’s drinking water.
Central Arkansas Water has kept an eye on Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline, but recent oil spills have made it a more pressing issue for the utility, which has spent millions in recent years to protect the watershed.
The Pegasus pipeline predates Lake Maumelle, which was constructed in the 1950s. The 858-mile pipeline, which runs from Patoka, Ill., to Nederland, Texas, near Houston, is the only pipeline that carries Canadian crude oil from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico.
“We’ve asked Exxon Mobile about moving it out ofthe watershed, and they said, ‘Sure, we’d be amenable to moving it if whoever is requesting that gives us $2 million a mile to move it,’” said Martin Maner, the utility’s director of watershed management.
Since moving the pipeline isn’t financially feasible, Maner said, the utility has become more diligent about monitoring the right of way where the pipeline crosses 14 miles of the watershed only several feet underground.
The utility created a risk mitigation plan for the watershed in May 2009 that included the Exxon Mobil pipeline as one of two most likely threats, the other being a chemical spill by an overturned truck. The catch-all document lists a rupture as a medium-probability risk, up there with drought, although high winds and ice storms posed a more likely problem for pumping out water.
“It’s not in danger as long as all these things are done properly,” Maner said.
Central Arkansas Water officials contacted Exxon Mobil last year to start a dialogue about a more comprehensive response plan in case the pipe did break. A July rupture of a 12-inch crude-oil pipeline under the Yellowstone River and the subsequent $135 million cleanup has made a plan even more necessary, utility officials have said.
Central Arkansas Water expects to buy two $20,000 trailers equipped with booms and other cleanup materials near the lake and is pressing Exxon Mobil to put in more shut-off valves along the line where it passes through the watershed.
“They’re making a very detailed site-specific [plan] for every tributary,” Maner said.
An internal inspection of the pipeline last year “indicates that the pipeline is operating normally,” said Amber Flournoy, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil Pipeline Company, which is responsible for the Pegasus pipeline.
The company also wrapped up a once-every-three-year assessment of exposed areas along the Pegasus pipeline, according to e-mails between Maner and Exxon Mobil officials.
That review found seven areas in the watershed where the 20-inch pipe has become exposed after years of natural erosion. The exposures range from a few inches in some places to about 20 feet in length in other areas, according to the e-mail.
Late last month, the utility’s watershed administrator drove a utility vehicle along 5.6 miles of the pipeline from Arkansas 300 to Arkansas 113 north of the lake to get a better idea of the exposures.The pictures he took showed several large stones resting on top of one section of exposed pipeline, a potential hazard although the Maumelle River doesn’t flow as fast as the Yellowstone River did in July.
ExxonMobil Pipeline is addressing the issue, Flournoy said, but she did not say how long the repairs will take.
Arkansas, Pages 17 on 11/27/2011