Following Spills and Sinkholes, Mariner East Pipeline Opponents Call on PA Governor Wolf to Stop Construction

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By Dan Zegart and Sharon Kellyย 

A rally in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on Saturday drew a crowd of roughly 200 opponents to Sunocoโ€™s Mariner East projects, who cited a litany of concerns about the companyโ€™s plans to pipe natural gas liquids like propane, butane, and ethane from the Marcellus shale 350 miles across Pennsylvania forย export.

โ€œThis project has made many of us in this community and across Pennsylvania unlikely pipeline activists,โ€ said Ginny Marcille-Kerslake, a resident of West Whiteland Township who lived across the street from a Sunoco drill site. โ€œOpposition to this project has brought together parents, grandparents, neighbors, legislators, emergency responders, business owners, school boards, Republicans, and Democratsย alike.โ€

On May 21, Administrative Law Judge Elizabeth Barnes ordered an emergency halt to construction work on the 20-inch diameter Mariner East 2 and the 16-inch Mariner 2X, and also stopped operation of the Mariner East 1 (ME1), an 80-year-old 8-inch line also carrying explosive natural gas liquids (NGLs) that in some places lies only 27 inches below ground. By contrast, Mariner East 2 is up to nine feet belowย ground.

This order required Sunoco to provide information about its welding records on the aging Mariner East 1 and to provide updated emergency response plans. In the past year, ME1 suffered three leaks in heavily populated areas but failed to detect or report any of them, wrote Barnes. In one leak, in Morgantown, it took Sunoco 90 minutes to shut off the pipeline, allowing 1,000 gallons of NGLs to leakย out.ย 

โ€œThis is a dangerous quantity of hazardous gas,โ€ Barnesย noted.

โ€œSunoco may have given safety pamphlets to 66,000 people along the 350-mile route, and to schools within (a half-mile) of the pipe,โ€ Judge Barnes wrote. โ€œHowever, given that vapor clouds can move depending on weather conditions and people are mobile within their communities, this isย insufficient.โ€

โ€œWe will pursue all legal remedies to overturn this Order, including our right to request [Public Utility Commission] review of the Order, which will be filed within the next seven days,โ€ Sunoco Pipeline said in a statement on Mayย 24.

The pipeline project has been plagued by spills and mishaps, racking up over 100 spills and creating huge sinkholes in suburban subdevelopments. In addition, it has been blamed for the contamination of a dozen water wells and hit with fines as high as $12.6 million by state regulators over permitย violations.

โ€œSunocoโ€™s been its own worst enemy,โ€ said State Senator Andy Dinniman, who gave an impassioned speech at the Saturday rally in which he said the pipeline buildersโ€™ disregard for property and environmental rights shows that they โ€œdonโ€™t respect the constitution of thisย commonwealth.โ€


Pennsylvania State Senator Andy Dinniman and his dog Jagger outside the West Chester County Courthouse ยฉ Laura Evangelistoย 2018

It was Dinniman who filed a complaint with the state Public Utility Commission in late May about a string of potentially dangerous mishaps involving Sunoco-Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) pipelines running through his district in Chester County. These included sinkholes in West Whiteland Township that exposed part of ME1, something that Dinniman and residents argue was inevitable given the area’s unstable geology, as well as the apparent contamination of well water by fluids used in horizontalย drilling.

Dinniman, who lives just two miles from the pipeline, noted that in none of these cases did Sunoco-ETP notify the state Department of Environmental Protection, which according to Judge Barnes has hit the company with 50 Notices of Violation since May 9,ย 2017.

When Mariner East I was built in the 1930s, these Philadelphia suburbs were largely farmlands. Now, the pipelineโ€™s route, which the much larger Mariner East 2 and 2X follow, runs through densely populated areas, within feet of elementary schools, businesses, and homes across Pennsylvaniaโ€™s southern tier.ย ย 

โ€œIt goes under a playground, two little league fields,โ€ said Jerry McMullen of Exton, Pennsylvania. โ€œIt goes past a nursing home, another shopping center, through twoย neighborhoods.โ€


โ€œThere’s just incident after incident,โ€ Jerry McMullen of Exton, Pennsylvania, said about Sunoco Pipelineโ€™s safety record ยฉ Laura Evangelistoย 2018

โ€œJust north of us, they contaminated 12 wells,โ€ McMullen, who added that Mariner East 1 runs through his backyard, 32 feet from his home. โ€œJust south of it, on Lisa Drive, they opened up all those sinkholes. All that is in a span of probably three miles and we’re right in the middle of thatย stretch.โ€

Nancy McMullen, Jerryโ€™s wife, said that she gardens in the backyard of the home where theyโ€™ve lived for 43 years, and was concerned that Sunoco was ill-prepared for the unstable karst formations that are common in the area โ€” even in her ownย garden.

โ€œWhen we dig, you should see, we find sandy limestone and you can see why it’s unstable, it just disintegrates,โ€ sheย said.

Adding to the danger for the older Mariner East pipeline is that Sunoco reversed the direction of flow so the smaller line can also bring NGLs from the Marcellus to the Philadelphia area for export. This despite a 2014 bulletin from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA)ย  warning about alterations in flow direction, or to the petroleum product being shipped, pipeline pressure, and other significant variables.ย ย ย ย 

โ€œFailures on natural gas transmission and hazardous liquid pipelines have occurred after these operational changes,โ€ PHMSA cautioned, pointing to two serious oil spills following flow reversals. However, neither accident involved the far more hazardous NGLs.

In her Mariner East ruling, Judge Barnes pointed to the role karst formations played in creating a 15-foot wide, 20-foot deep sinkhole at 491 Lisa Drive in early March. She added that testimony from a Sunoco witness claiming the earlier state-ordered shutdown of operations on the pipeline had led to the sinkhole was not a credible explanation. Other sinkholes opened just south of 491 in the path of both Mariner East 1 and Mariner East 2X, and a spill of drilling fluids caused another at 479 Lisaย Drive.

A visit to Lisa Drive last week revealed a once-comfortable suburban cul de sac filled with pick-up trucks belonging to pipeline crews, who were still working on the sinkholes with heavy equipment inย backyards.


A protester at Saturdayโ€™s rally carries a sign calling attention to the dense population along Mariner Eastโ€™s route. ยฉ Laura Evangelistoย 2018

A few miles southeast, in Media, Pennsylvania, both Sunoco and the state Public Utility Commission are looking into how an excavator operated by a water main contractor struck and slightly damaged the Mariner East 2 pipeline in the front yard of a house across the street from the Glenwood Elementary school on Mayย 21.ย 

In a statement, Sunoco Pipeline said that the damage was minimal, just scratches to the pipelineโ€™s protective coating. But rally participants described their concern that a more serious strike could have resulted in a catastrophe for 415 young children who attend theย school.

โ€œHad this occurred when the pipeline was operating, a strike by a piece of heavy equipment could cause an explosion,โ€ said Eric Friedman, spokesman for the Middletown Coalition for Communityย Safety.

Friedman noted that almost exactly a year before the accident, the elementary school did an evacuation drill to prepare for a potential pipeline leak. But he said the Rose Tree-Media School District, one of 40 within Mariner Eastโ€™s โ€œblast zoneโ€ โ€” the area immediately impacted by a breach in the pipeline โ€” has received no information from Sunoco or the state on how to prepare for aย leak.ย 

With no hard data, school officials and residents donโ€™t even know if they can safely use cell phone alerts to warn of a leak because the gas is so volatile, using a cell phone might set it off, saidย Friedman.

Equally disturbing was the fact that the excavator accident happened because Sunocoโ€™s records showed the pipe at nine feet below ground when in fact it was only six feet down, said Friedman. That means the data provided to the stateโ€™s โ€œOne Callโ€ pipeline safety system, the โ€œCall before you digโ€ number used to avoid pipeline accidents, may not beย trustworthy.

Drilling mud leak along Mariner East near apartment buildings
Workers have struggled to repair an โ€œinadvertent returnโ€ of drilling mud at the Turnbridge Apartments in Middletown, Pennsylvania, where Mariner Eastโ€™s route runs within 25 feet of apartment buildings. ยฉ Laura Evangelistoย 2018

Some pipeline opponents argue that the project has been rushed and that state regulators need to slow things down. Others suggest the problem runsย deeper.

โ€œIt wouldn’t be safe for them to do it if they had all the time in the world, because it doesn’t make any difference, pipelines leak at some point,โ€ said Ellen Gerhart, a landowner who has hosted a pipeline protest encampment known as Camp Whiteย Pine.

Her daughter Elise spent the weekend at the Fight Toxic Prisons convergence organized by the Abolitionist Law Center in Pittsburgh, Ellen said, while she attended the Mariner East rally in West Chester. That event centers on drawing connections between the environmental movement and prison justice struggles, focusing on how mass incarceration has left prisoners and residents of surrounding communities at risk of harm from toxic mold, contaminated water, and otherย hazards.

Gerhart, 63, also described her own experiences with the prison system after being arrested for civil disobedience surrounding pipeline construction on her property, including one instance where she was kept in solitary confinement for three days after declining to answer questions without an attorneyย present.

Gerhart pushed back against the argument that pipelines have a better safety record than transporting fossil fuels by tanker truck orย rail.

โ€œMy contention is if you have a truck or you have a train, you have a confined amountโ€ of fossil fuels, she said, whereas a pipeline carries far higher volumes so the consequences of a single accident can be moreย severe.


Ellen Gerhart at the rally on Saturday. ยฉ Laura Evangelistoย 2018

With Judge Barnesโ€™ suspension order to be reviewed by Pennsylvaniaโ€™s Public Utility Commission at its June 14 meeting, public interest groups are raising red flags about financial ties between the PUC and the gas industry. Four of the five commissioners have close professional or financial ties to the oil and gas industry, according to a Public Accountability Initiative report issuedย Friday.

Commissioner Norman J. Kennard was previously a partner at the law firm currently representing Sunoco on Mariner East. Commissioner David Sweet is also an ex-partner at a law firm that represents Sunoco. Commissioner Andrew Place is a former executive at a major drilling firm, and Commissioner John Coleman is a director at SilcoTek, which provides high-tech protective coatings to the oil and gas industry, the reportย found.

โ€œGiven that a majority of commissioners have built careers tied to oil and gas interests, itโ€™s important that the public be aware of any potential conflicts as the PUC gets ready to decide on the Mariner East project,โ€ Derek Seidman, author of the report, said in aย statement.

Sunoco is under heavy pressure from its business partners to get Mariner East 1 flowing again and to finish Mariner East 2 and 2X soon. It currently expects to have Mariner East 2 in operation by the third quarter of this year and to finish construction on the 2X project by the end ofย 2019.

Following the latest accident, drilling company Range Resources, one of the largest natural gas liquids producers in the state, said it had reached commercial agreements to move natural gas liquids that were to be shipped on Mariner East 1 via otherย pipelines.

โ€œThe issue is of the market maintaining confidence in the viability of the Mariner East system as a whole,โ€ Debnil Chowdhury, executive director of NGL research at IHS Markit, told Kallanish Energy in April, following the first shutdown. โ€œThe main concern is, or soon will be, whether takers of their supply are now rethinking long-term contracts on Mariner East 2 because of this incident raising questions on reliability of theย supply.โ€

Those export plans are also under fire from environmental activists, who argue that the shale industryโ€™s plans to separate and sell ethane from fracked gas wells to produce plastics creates grave environmental problems at every step of theย chain.

Currently, much of the ethane from fracked wells remains mixed with the methane sold to utilities and home owners as natural gas โ€” but ethane alone attracts a higher price from the petrochemical industry for use in chemical fertilizers andย plastics.

โ€œItโ€™s bad for public health, itโ€™s bad for the climate, and all for the end of churning out ever more plastic, which is already killing the oceans. Weโ€™ve got sea life dying from the inside out as they swallow plastic bags,โ€ said biologist Sandra Steingraber, co-founder of New Yorkers Against Fracking. โ€œAnd so everybodyโ€™s running around and saying donโ€™t order a plastic straw, weโ€™re all trying to take this sort of lifestyle, consumerism approach. Weโ€™re going to get lots more plastic straws coming at us, lots more plastic bags, just because the chemical industry solves a waste disposal problem for the energyย industry.โ€


Sandra Steingraber spoke at Saturdayโ€™s rally about plans to export ethane to Scotland and other countries for use in the petrochemical industry. ยฉ Laura Evangelistoย 2018

Others at the Saturday rally questioned whether Pennsylvania should make the plastics industry a cornerstone of the stateโ€™sย economy.

โ€œMy concern is that once we start building that into our budget as fixes for structural budget problems,โ€ said Anton Andrew, an attorney running for state representative in Delaware County, โ€œwe then rely on an inherently dangerousย industry.โ€

Earlier this year, the administration of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf came under scrutiny over the role that the governorโ€™s aide Yesenia Bane, the wife of a gas industry lobbyist, played in greasing the wheels for Department of Environmental Protection permits for Mariner East. Text messages obtained by State Impact, an NPR reporting project, as part of a lawsuit led to an ongoing investigation by the State Ethics Commission that was made public inย May.

Environmental groups are now calling on the governor to reconsider the Mariner Eastย projects.

โ€œWeโ€™ve seen contaminated waters, drilling spills, and massive sinkholes,โ€ Food and Water Watch said in a statement announcing the event. โ€œGovernor Wolf, itโ€™s time for you to stand up against the greed, recklessness, and arrogance of Sunocoย Logistics.โ€

Main image credit: ยฉ Laura Evangelistoย 2018

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Sharon Kelly is an attorney and investigative reporter based in Pennsylvania. She was previously a senior correspondent at The Capitol Forum and, prior to that, she reported for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Earth Island Journal, and a variety of other print and online publications.

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