Free to Flow?

Sunoco sees scant resistance for plan to run five pipelines by FDR Park.

by Alex C. Pasquariello

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Published: Nov 21, 2006

cityspace

It's a sunny autumn afternoon in FDR Park, but most people here are in the shadows under I-95 hitting the latest addition to its renowned skate park, a massive new 12-foot concrete bowl that was completed Nov. 4.

Since the city exiled them to this patch of wasteland in 1994 — codified by the 2002 Love Park skateboard ban — Philly skaters have created an oasis of spontaneous, if spray-painted, beauty. But today, some worry about a development plan that could disturb their peace.

Philadelphia-based oil giant Sunoco is eyeing the land between FDR and the adjacent CSX railroad tracks for the home stretch of five petroleum and hydrogen pipelines that would link its Eagle Point refinery in West Deptford, N.J., with its Southwest Philadelphia complex.

Skate-park regulars knew this was coming, considering they had watched Sunoco engineers survey the site all spring. But having already been kicked out of one world-famous Philly skate spot, some are loathe to just accept statements that the project will not displace them again.

"I guess you just gotta believe that after what the city has done to skaters already that they wouldn't mess with FDR," says Ian Nuge, 24, who regularly commutes from Cape May County, N.J., to skate. "You just hope, anyway."

Because negotiations are ongoing, company spokesman Gerald Davis isn't discussing the route of the "Eagle Point Inter-Refinery Connection," which the company hopes to begin constructing in June 2008. Sunoco first approached the Fairmount Park Commission about running a buried pipeline system along the park's southern and southwestern border late last summer, says FPC director of operations Chris Palmer. (The skate park is located along that southern border, meaning, after some disruptive digging, a pipeline could conceivably run right under it.)

The full commission gave conceptual approval to the Sunoco plan at its May meeting, allowing the company to do their due diligence in site selection and analysis. If granted the federal and state permits required to run the system north out of New Jersey and under the Delaware River, the Naval Business Center and the CSX railroad tracks, Sunoco will still need final approval and a right-of-way agreement from the FPC to run the pipelines west along the park's southern border.

Besides approving the preliminary plans, the commission's approval opened the door for negotiations on a right-of-way agreement, which is essentially a lease for a strip of land. In this case, the land is largely overgrown and, except for its proximity to the skate park, useless to the public, Palmer says.

Another crucial issue to be decided in yet-to-be-scheduled negotiations is whether any proceeds from Sunoco would go back into the park or get diverted into the city's general fund, he says.

Nobody involved has publicly discussed what dollar amount might constitute just compensation, but given the geographic and economic realities facing Sunoco, the FPC would appear to have the upper hand. (The FPC's overgrown strip of land between the interstate and the railroad tracks appears to be Sunoco's only option.)

Running the pipeline under the east-west length of I-95 would require expensive directional drilling under a major artery — if PennDOT would even allow it. And routing the pipeline north of I-95, into FDR, wouldclose a significantpart of the park to the public and raise right-of-way costs — if the FPC would even allow it.

"We haven't talked with the city finance department yet," Palmer says. "Ideally, the funds paid will benefit the citizens that use FDR."

Connecting the Eagle Point facility — which was acquired from El Paso Corp. for $111 million in 2004 — with Sunoco's existing inter-refinery pipeline system is crucial to the company's long-term viability, Davis says.

One 8-inch diameter pipeline moves the equivalent of 240 tanker trucks (or one full barge) per day and Sunoco's plans call for four of them. The fifth will be a 10-inch hydrogen line which Davis says will allow the company to increase production of profitable and environmentally friendly low-sulfur fuels.

"In terms of safety, environmental responsibility and efficiency," he says, "pipeline transmission is far superior to the other methods available for transporting these products between refineries — trucks, barges and railcar."

But Sunoco pipelines in and around the city have mixed environmental records.

In 1995, the company completed a similar refinery connection without a hitch, linking its Paulsboro Terminal with its Philadelphia complex with a seven-mile, three-pipeline system that required directional drilling under the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. But in February 2000, a 50-year-old pipeline connecting the company's Hog Island terminal with its Darby Creek Tank Farm leaked 192,000 gallons of crude oil into the 1,200-acre Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, a spill that cost the company $3.6 million and forced it to rebuild the system.

Miles of Sunoco pipelines run under the city safely, a fact that seems to have resigned South Philadelphia community groups to the project based on the limited information they've received to date.

On separate occasions in June, the company briefed City Council President Anna C. Verna, who represents the district, and the South/Southwest Philadelphia Community Advisory Panel, an umbrella group comprising 16 neighborhood organizations. Maria Mirarchi, president of Friends of Historic FDR Park, which has looked out for the park's health for 20 years, says that the park should be a refuge from commercial and industrial uses. Still, she says, her group doesn't see any reasons to "put up any roadblocks at this time" and is putting its trust in the FPC.

"Sunoco," she adds, "is an important part of South Philadelphia."

Packer Park Civic Association vice president Don J. Toto also says his group will not object. Given that the pipelines are proposed for areas of the park that are generally unused and will be "state-of-the-art," the PPCA does not view the project as an "threat to our community or the environment," he maintains.

Joshua Nims, director of Franklin's Paine Skatepark Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group, was notified along with FPSF over the summer and assured by park staff that neither their existing nor new terrain was in peril — so long as future use and growth is kept under the interstate. "We greatly appreciate our friends at [the FPC] for communicating what information they have and allowing us to build the new bowl unfettered," says Nims.

Still, as far as Verna is concerned, no price will buy access to the park in her district if her constituents don't approve of the project, her spokesman Tony Radwanski maintains.

"President Verna will not support the project against the will of her constituents," he says, "and any action on the Sunoco proposal by the Fairmont Park Commission without extensive and well-noticed public meetings is unacceptable."

(a_pasquariello@citypaper.net)

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