Why the last piece of a pipeline under Hampton Roads has gone from an afterthought to a fiery battle

Aug 04, 2023

NORFOLK

If you’ve heard the latest uproar over a local pipeline for natural gas, there's a good chance your head is still spinning.

Listening to Colonna's Shipyard might convince you that the Southside Connector could decimate entire neighborhoods with a catastrophic explosion, and that Virginia Natural Gas couldn't have picked a worse spot to build it.

Listening to VNG might convince you that the project is perfectly safe and routine, and that the real risk would come from not building it – the prospect of hundreds of thousands of people without heat in the winter.

Dueling press conferences and editorials. Coalitions and community meetings. "Blast zones" outlined on maps, running right through the heart of our hometown.

Natural gas – never more than an afterthought – is suddenly in the conversation.

An accident earlier this month took emotions up another notch, when a Chesapeake home was blown to bits after the installation of a natural gas stove.

The woman who lived there was killed and her husband critically injured. Others were wounded. Nearby houses were rocked on their foundations.

That accident, still under investigation, had nothing to do with the Southside Connector. But it was a reminder that when it comes to natural gas, even a garden hose-size line can be lethal if something goes wrong.

And the Southside Connector is a fire hose: 9 miles of 24-inch steel pipe operating at hundreds of times the pressure of a household service line, through heavily populated areas of South Hampton Roads.

In many ways, this is a typical energy battle, short on easy solutions and long on passion. It's being waged with worst-case scenarios and conflicting statements – difficult to sort though, even harder to fully disprove.

What's unusual about this one: The two sides are fighting over the final piece of pipe. The bulk of the $62 million project has already been built, buried in a crescent-shaped path that runs from the outskirts of downtown Norfolk and to the Gilmerton Bridge area of Chesapeake.

Construction on the connector started in 2017 at each end, marching toward the middle. Other than some protests in Chesapeake last year, it's gone into the ground with nary a peep, mostly along city and electrical right of ways.

The final segment – dipping under the eastern branch of the Elizabeth River – will tie the whole project together.

Drilling would start on one bank at Harbor Park stadium, owned by the city of Norfolk.

No problem.

It would end on the other bank at Colonna's Shipyard, owned by 89-year-old Bill Colonna.

Problem.

Colonna says no way. What if the pipeline leaks or ruptures? His 120-acre shipyard employs a thousand people. Welding, torching, grinding. Work that's full of sparks.

"My God, I reckon," he said, shaking his head at the prospect. "That's just crazy."

Even without disaster, Colonna says, the pipeline could cripple his business. The military – the 140-year-old yard's bread and butter – might think sending ships there for repair is too dangerous.

On top of that, the pipe would run right beneath a spot where Colonna hoped to someday drive pilings for another pier.

When the gas company needed an easement, he refused to sell. In September, their standoff ended the same way dozens of others had in Chesapeake, when landowners there tried to ward off the Southside Connector. The judge sided with VNG.

Instead of giving up, though, Colonna has moved his case to the court of public opinion, rekindling opposition to the pipeline in general.

Now, everyone is stirred up, including members of the Virginia Ship Repair Association and a couple of congressmen, who’ve written to the secretary of the Navy, saying the pipeline poses a hazard not just to Colonna's but to every other shipyard nearby – threatening the industrial base of Hampton Roads, the readiness of the Navy and the security of the very nation.

Not to mention all the homes, schools, churches and businesses along its path.

Jim Kibler, VNG's president, says the risks are being overblown. He’d have no qualms, he says, if the connector cut across his own backyard.

Most people simply don't realize what it takes to make "sure that when they turn on the burner on the stove or they crank up the heat, they’re warm and they’re fed," Kibler says. "It frustrates me."

This final piece of the Southside Connector – less than 2,000 feet of pipe – has forced us to think about something that usually goes unnoticed:

The vast network hidden beneath our feet that powers our daily lives.

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We live and work atop miles?of pipe ferrying potentially explosive natural gas through our communities – a trade-off for a source of comparatively inexpensive, clean fuel for furnaces, water heaters and?appliances in 70 million homes and businesses.

We do it because a thick manual of federal and state construction requirements keeps a lid on the danger far more often than not.

When accidents do happen, the consequences can range wildly.

Last month, a landslide ruptured a large new?line?in?a sparsely populated area of Pennsylvania, blasting a crater, igniting a sky-high fireball and destroying one house. But no one was injured.

That same month, when a smaller, older line failed in the suburbs near Boston, a series of explosions charred more than 60 buildings, killed a teenager, injured dozens of people and prompted a days-long evacuation affecting thousands.

There is one accepted constant: The higher the pressure in the pipe,?the bigger the boom. And pressure is the life-blood of the system.

The chain that eventually leads to a tiny flame under a water heater in Norfolk begins far away, at wells tapped into methane deposits created over millions of years by layers of rotting vegetation.

They feed a maze of pipelines – spaghetti on the map – crisscrossing the country. Since gas naturally moves from areas of high pressure to low, like air bleeds through a hole in a tire, compressor stations in the right places are enough to provide the push. Gas flows from wellheads into a superhighway of interstate transmission lines, then follows a descending ladder of pressures, fanning out to smaller distribution arteries and finally, individual service lines.

Utility companies like Virginia Natural Gas are the middle men – the distribution tier that hooks into the transmission lines. They build and maintain the local infrastructure, buy gas from distant suppliers and distribute it directly to customers.

In exchange for exclusive territories and the authority to force the sale of land they decide they need, utility companies are expected to offer reliable service. And that, says VNG, is becoming a question mark in Hampton Roads.

Two transmission lines poke into our cul-de-sac, but we’re at the ends of both straws, and they’ve been heavily sipped on before they even get here.

Coming from the west into a station in Chesapeake, where I-464 meets Military Highway: the Columbia Line, moving gas from places like the Gulf of Mexico

Coming in from the north and terminating at a Norfolk station a few blocks from Scope: a line with multiple names and segments transporting gas from places like Northern Appalachia.

The idea behind the Southside Connector: Link the ends of those transmission lines, forming a loop so the utility can pull more heavily from one or the other.

For now, VNG says, that will help stabilize pressure and provide a backup in case one of the transmission lines has a problem upstream.

In time, it will offer another gas source by meeting a spur of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline that's heading for the same Chesapeake station as the connector.

"We’ve got more mouths to feed," Kibler said. "Last January, we set and broke three records for demand."

Operating pressure inside the connector – a main concern for the project's critics – will be as much as 1,250 pounds per square inch, the same as many interstate transmission lines.

VNG intends to keep the connector below top pressure when possible, Kibler says, but the option is necessary "to make sure the gas pushes out into all the small, tiny fingers that serve the 300,000 homes and businesses that are connected to us."

Doing so with consistently lower pressures would require a system with more miles of pipe and compressor stations, he says. Cost isn't the obstacle. VNG is allowed to hike rates to cover infrastructure investments.

"It's the compressor stations," Kibler said. "Neighbors don't like them. They’re noisy."

Colonna has convinced the city to conduct an independent study. At least, he says, detour the pipeline around his shipyard.

"We’ve had some serious challenges in our history," he said. "I rate this right up there with the worst."

So far, VNG refuses to make changes. The shipyard clash has already put the project a year behind and the clock ticks on a tight construction window.

The work at Harbor Park must be completed before the baseball stadium reopens in the spring.

Drilling for that last piece was supposed to begin Wednesday.

On Tuesday night, the city issued a statement saying VNG has agreed to postpone construction until the study's results are presented to city council on Nov. 20.

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The Virginian-Pilot fact checked several key claims in the debate between Virginia Natural Gas and Colonna's Shipyard – click here to see what we found.

DID YOU KNOW?

The planet's heat and pressure turn decomposing organic matter into natural gas – which is mostly methane. Turn things down a bit and get liquid oil.

Rare but real: Lightning strikes a gas seep, igniting a fire that seems to roar from the earth – a source of ancient awe. The Greeks built a temple atop such a site, where a priestess known as the Oracle of Delphi delivered flame-inspired prophecies.

By the late 1700s, natural gas was starting to be harnessed, marking the end of the age of candles and kerosene. But wells were remote and long-distance pipelines scarce, so municipalities built their own "gasworks," burning coal to produce methane that was piped to local customers.

Eventually, a network of trunk lines closed the gap between wellheads and cities, and gritty coal gas gave way to "cleaner" natural gas in homes and businesses.

In the early 1900s, electricity – produced by coal-burning power plants – became the darling, which hit the natural gas industry hard.

Environmental regulations of the late 20th century reversed that trend: They pushed power plants to convert from coal to natural gas for fuel.

WHAT ABOUT NOW?

Texas and Pennsylvania produce nearly half the natural gas pumped in this country.

Most of what's used in Virginia hails from the Gulf Coast or Northern Appalachia.

Supplies have boomed with developments in horizontal drilling and "fracking" – fracturing shale rock with high-pressure water to release trapped natural gas.

A super-highway is being built to take advantage of fracking: the Atlantic Coast Pipeline – a $5 billion, 450-mile project of Dominion Energy, Duke Energy and Southern Gas Company, which owns Virginia Natural Gas.

The ACP's route starts in West Virginia, crosses into Virginia near Staunton and runs southeast toward the state line near Emporia, where a spur will be built toward Hampton Roads.

That spur will terminate at the same Chesapeake station as the southern end of VNG's Southside Connector, giving the utility access to another gas source that's owned, in part, by its parent company.

?Ryan Murphy, 757-446-2299, [email protected]

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