Larry Hjalmarson sometimes sits in his Houston office and looks at a painting of ice skaters in New York City. He pictures someone pulling off the skates and heading back to a high-rise apartment to get warm.
The vice president of safety, environmental and pipeline integrity for Williams (Transco) knows that the gas that warms those skaters will travel from Houston, through Madison County, Georgia, and up the east coast to the “Big Apple.” He and other company workers are responsible for getting the 3.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas there safely each day. It takes the gas about four days at 10 miles an hour to make that trip.
“In 62 years that gas has never stopped flowing,” said Hjalmarson.
Of course, the gas must be sped up along the pipeline at booster stations, where natural gas is pressurized to help maintain the flow. And Madison County is home to one of Transco’s eastern seaboard booster stations. Actually, Madison County is the site of three major gas pipeline booster stations — one natural gas (Williams) and two petroleum (Colonial and Plantation). In that way, Madison County is a major link in the nation’s energy chain, though it’s easy to overlook this fact, considering that the pipelines are buried three to four feet underground.
These pipeline booster stations are occasionally in the news locally. Most recently, the Williams station in Comer applied for renewal of its air emissions permit from the Georgia Environmental Protection Division.
Several residents around the booster station in Comer voiced concern at a Feb. 2 EPD hearing on the permit about the emissions from the plant. A state health study found no evidence of cancer linking the emissions to area sickness. But some Transco area residents have voiced dismay with those findings. They note a prevalence of cancer cases in the area and feel the emissions from the plant are behind nearby illnesses. They say the health study was not thoroughly conducted. The Comer booster station emits an estimated 183 tons annually of formaldehyde, a carcinogen, according to EPD records.
Madison County resident Joe Costyn teaches science at Commerce High School. And he took several of his students to the February EPD hearing on the emissions permit. Costyn’s students asked EPD officials a number of questions, but no Williams officials spoke at that meeting. And a number of questions were left unanswered.
Costyn arranged for his students to tour the Williams Transco facility last week, along with Hjalmarson, Williams district manager Mark Mulder, State Senator Frank Ginn, as well as reporters and photographers from two local papers. The tour and discussions lasted three hours.
For safety reasons, all participants were asked to turn off all electronic devices during the natural gas facility tour. Everyone was provided with safety goggles and ear plugs. And the group walked through the buildings where engines roared as they pressurized the gas in the lines. Officials hollered over the loud machinery, pointing out gas detectors, various safety gauges and monitoring cameras. A fair portion of the work at the facility includes maintaining proper calibration on the equipment so that readings are accurate, Mulder said. The facility can also be monitored remotely from the company headquarters in Houston, where staff keep a watch over the entire pipeline 24/7.
After the tour, Hjalmarson sat at a table with projected images on the wall behind him — including the image of the New York ice skaters — offering facts about the pipelines and fielding questions from the students. He encouraged the group to ask him anything, whether it was about air emissions, other safety issues, or the natural gas industry as a whole.
And the students took him up on the offer, asking about the belief by some local residents that emissions are causing cancer.
Hjalmarson said the state health study showed no link between cancer cases and booster station emissions. He said emissions tend to go up in the air and not to ground level.
“If the answer to that question (that the emissions caused cancer) was ‘yes,’ we’d shut the plant down right now and make the changes that were needed,” said Hjalmarson.
The students asked why the facility hasn’t upgraded older equipment that emits more pollutants in favor of more modern, cleaner options.
Hjalmarson said the company is meeting federal guidelines on emissions and that Williams doesn’t believe there’s a health hazard created by the plant’s pollutants.
Hjalmarson and Mulder both said Williams is not opposed to upgrades. And they anticipate such measures in the future. But they said the federal government will have to initiate the actions through its regulatory system.
But Hjalmarson said the government needs to treat all pipeline companies equally on new environmental requirements. If Williams is forced to upgrade its equipment in the future, its competitors should be too, he said.
“A comparison would be in the auto industry, if they said Ford you have to do this, GM you don’t,” said Hjalmarson.
He noted that the company establishes rates with its customers through a federally mandated rate setting process. He said upgrades would have to be recovered with higher costs to customers, who would not respond well to a voluntary upgrade in equipment by Williams.
The pipeline safety executive said his primary safety concern is related to pipeline failures, where the results can be catastrophic. He showed the students photos of explosive ruptures, such as the Williams natural gas pipeline explosion in Appomattox, VA, in 2008.
“I think about the people who live along our pipeline all the time,” said Hjalmarson.
He said that engineers work around the clock to make sure such incidents don’t happen. The pipeline industry also relies on “smart pigs,” which include some of the same technology used in MRIs to search for weak spots along the pipelines. Hjalmarson said the “smart pig” technology continues to improve.
Costyn and his students expressed their appreciation to the Williams officials for the tour and answered “pop quiz” questions from Sen. Ginn about the pipeline, before heading back to Commerce on the school bus.
