http://www.boston.com/dailynews/084/nation/Floors_of_Great_Lakes_could_so:.shtml

Floors of Great Lakes could someday hold gas pipelines

By Tammy Webber, Associated Press, 3/25/2001 21:06

CHICAGO (AP) Seeking to meet the nation's ever-growing demand for natural gas, suppliers want to build pipelines through new and controversial territory: the Great Lakes.

Gas companies say construction along the floors of Lake Michigan and Lake Erie can be done safely, but the plans alarm environmentalists. Neither pipeline has yet been approved by the federal government.

''We view the lake bottom as a public trust resource, not for giving away to private entities,'' said Cameron Davis, executive director of the Lake Michigan Federation.

Peoples Energy Corp. and Houston-based El Paso Corp. have formed a partnership to build a 104-mile-long pipeline through Lake Michigan, from the Indiana-Illinois state line to Milwaukee.

The plan is on hold while developers try to drum up customers mainly natural gas-fired power plants being built to help supply electricity to the Chicago area.

Meanwhile, an application to build a Canada-to-New York pipeline that would pass through 33 miles of Lake Erie is awaiting approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Environmentalists are concerned that using the Great Lakes for pipelines could encourage more lakefront industrial development. Davis said he also fears the pipelines would allow suppliers to begin moving oil and chemicals through the lakes, and that sediment stirred up during construction could harm drinking water.

FERC spokeswoman Tamara Young-Allen said she knows of no existing major pipelines in the Great Lakes. Industry officials say the pipelines can be built safely.

''There are a lot of safeguards nowadays,'' said Joe Martucci, a spokesman for ANR Pipeline Co., a subsidiary of El Paso Corp. ''We have hundreds of miles of pipeline off the Gulf of Mexico; the technology today is such that we're confident we could put a pipeline in the lake with no long-term impacts to the lake.''

Karl Brack, spokesman for Columbia Gas Transmission Corp., one of the developers of the pipeline that would cross Lake Erie, said interference with the environment would be minimal.

Cutting through the lakes also may be less expensive and faster than acquiring land, where there often are obstacles such as houses and roads.

Natural gas consumption is expected to increase from around 22 trillion cubic feet per year now to about 30 trillion by 2010 mostly for electric generation, said Mary O'Driscoll, spokeswoman for the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. Fully 95 percent of all new electric plants are fueled by natural gas.

''It's a great market, but you need to have the infrastructure to be able to serve that market,'' O'Driscoll said.

Davis said other land-based projects already approved or under construction may eliminate the need for the Lake Michigan pipeline, which would be laid in a trench at least several miles offshore.

For example, a 344-mile-long pipeline from Chicago to Canada was approved in 1999, and a 149-mile, $230 million pipeline from Joliet to southeastern Wisconsin was approved by FERC two weeks ago.

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2001