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Research
Oct. 13, 2003
Nov. 2, 2003
Nov. 2, 2003 - Our entire
team met in Barker Library to find the impacts of roads and pipelines. This
is a summary of the findings:
FACTS ABOUT THE EXISTING PIPELINE:
1. 800 miles long, 48 inch diameter.
*Buried - about 420 miles
*Aboveground - about 380 miles in areas of permafrost
2. 11 pump stations, only 7 operating.The 11 pump stations are located
at intervals of approximately 50 to 100 miles
3. Starts at North Slope 800 miles away from Port Valdez where it
terminates.
4. Crude oil produced on Alaska's North Slope.
5. In 2001 , rate was 1 million barrels per day.
6. For the 420 miles that the pipeline is above ground, it is supported
on vertical support members (VSMs), located about every 60 feet. Valves
are strategically placed along the pipeline to permit isolation of
sections of the pipeline and minimize the volume of potential spills.
7. About 75% of the pipeline corridor traverses permafrost. In areas of
unstable soil, the pipeline is elevated above ground to keep the
permafrost from melting. About 420 miles of the pipeline is elevated,
and 380 miles is buried. In particular areas, small portions of the
buried pipeline are refrigerated (total of 4 miles).
8. Above ground sections of the pipeline are built in a zig zag
configuration to allow for expansion or contraction of the pipe because
of temperature changes. The design also allows for pipeline movement
caused by an earthquake (TAPS crosses three major active fault lines).
An earthquake monitoring system provides ground motion detecting and
warning capabilities for strong events. So if any shifts (whether due to
temperature fluctuations or earthquakes) occurs, the shape of the
pipeline compensates for this shift and prevents oil spillage.
9. About 554 elevated animal crossings were created to allow large
animals to cross the pipeline without obstruction. At elevated animal
crossings, pipeline height is at least 10 feet. At 23 other locations,
the pipeline is buried to allow animals to cross; each buried crossing
is about 200 ft. wide.
Main facts summarized :
Pipeline diameter: 48 inches
* Pipeline length: 800 miles
* Buried - about 420 miles
* Aboveground - about 380 miles in areas of permafrost
* Width of the right of way:
* 100 feet on state land
* 54 feet for buried pipeline and 64 feet for elevated
(aboveground) pipeline on federal land.
* Elevation: 4738 feet (Atigun Pass) to sea
level (Valdez)
* Number of pump stations: 11 (7 operational)
* Number of river and stream crossings: 34
major rivers, about 800
smaller streams
* Number of mountain ranges crossed: 3 -
Brooks Range, Alaska
Range, Chugach Range
* Amount of crude oil carried:
* Capacity for more than 2 million barrels of oil through
pipeline each day.
* Currently (2001) transporting about 1 million barrels
per day.
* About 400 million barrels transported per year
* More than 13 billion barrels total transported to date
* More than 16,000 tankers loaded
* Construction cost (in 1977 dollars): $8
billion
* The TAPS right-of-way is owned by:
1. Federal government: 375 miles
2. State government: 344 miles
3. Native allotments/corporations: 51 miles
4. TAPS owners: 8 miles
5. Other private: 22 miles
now, we're going to move on to the Environmental impact of the pipeline,
which is basically one of the two points we are going to be responsible
of answering on tomorrow in the midterm:
____________________________________________________________________
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE PIPELINE:
1. Terrestrial Environment:
* Even though mitigation measures are being taken and specialized
pipelines are used to reduce the thawing of permafrost when the
pipelines are buried underground, a significant amount of permafrost
thawing persists.
* Maintenance activities, corrosion digs and construction projects for
pipeline related facilities continuously cause localized TEMPORARY land
disturbance.
* If no proper river training is applied, the pipeline can adversely
affect the behaviour of rivers.
2. Water Resources and Wastewater:
* Expanding the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline to reach ANWR means that more
pressure is going to be imposed on the water resources in order to
support operations and maintenance activities.
* The wastewater discharges are a great threat to the environment, blah
blah blah .
3. Atmospheric Environment:
* Widespread point-source emissions result in a deterioration in air
quality.
4. Biological Resources:
* Vegetation and Wetlands-- There is a great loss of vegetation and
wetlands under gravel fill nad changes from water impoundments and
thermokarst.
* Fish -- Impacts on fish include obstruction of movements in low water
crossings or culverts along the pipline, injury or habitat loss from
potential oil spills, and recreational fishing harvests. Obstruction of
movements would be a continuous problem because of the dynamic nature of
the pipeline and associated water bodies. Oil spills can impact fish,
although the duration and extent of impacts are usually limited.
* Birds -- Increased predation on waterfowl by mammalian and avian
predators may occur if predator populations increase due to access to
garbage. Oil spills can also kill large numbers of birds.
* Terrestrial Mammals -- Important impacts include disturbance and
displacement from preferred habitats, mortality from roadkills,
increased predator numbers from access to anthropogenic foods, and sport
hunting. Disturbance and displacement of caribou during the calving
period is also a potential impact.
* Marine Mammals -- Important impacts include disturbance and
displacement during offshore exploration and development and mortality
or injury from oil spills.
_________________________________________
MECHANISM OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE PIPELINE - Understand what
exactly is causing the damages:
* Maintenance is often required and this, as we previously mentioned,
impacts the ground. Maintenance takes various forms:
a. Corrosion repair of below-ground mainline pipe-line.
b. slope/workpad maintenance, pipes situated in sloping areas require
more frequent check-ups and maintenance.
c. Potential pipe-line replacement.
d. Mainline Below-Ground Valve Maintenance.
e. Remedation of Mainline Cathodic Protection.
What is Cathodic Protection ?
It mitigates corrosion of buried mainline pipe.
f. River Crossings and River Training Structure Repairs.
g. Surveillance Actions,
in the summer-- helicopters or four-wheel-drive trucks on the workpad
and access roads.
in the winter-- snow vehicles or helicopters.
again , this causes physical damage and pollution.
h. Fuel gas line maintenance and repair
i. New material sites/rock quarries-- basically, damages due to gravel /
rock mining needed to build the roads that will be required to operate
the pipeline.
* The second mechanism of environmental impact is spilling of oil.
* Of course, the actual building of the pipeline.
_______________________________________________________
TWO TYPES OF ROADS POSSIBLE FOR TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATED WITH PIPELINE:
1. Gravel Roads :
In order to build gravel roads we need to get gravel materials. In order
to do that we need to dig gravel from river beds, river beds are usually
fresh water ones so this pollutes or freshwater, or use explosion
techniques. this will deisturb the ecology of the area and any habitats
of animals as well as vegetation found in that area. The actual road
will also affect the permafrost (increased heat and pressure .. higher
chance of thawing..). Workpad and access-road embankments built over the
relatively warm permafrost will compress or disturb the vegetative cover
that formerly protected the permafrost. This would cause the ground to
absorb more radiant head and would result in the thawing of near-surface
permafrost under the embankments. In addition to that a scar or
footprint is going to be left in the areas where the roads are built,
ice wedges will be created . Furthermore, animals will be affected by
these roads. For example, migration of birds, crossing of mammals,
etc...
2. Ice Roads :
Ice roads need fresh water, trucks to dispense this water and low
temperatures to keep the road frozen in certain areas.
The freshwater is in limited supply, therefore, using it for building
the roads means less is available for other needs. Also, we will have
lower water levels under ice, so water dwelling organisms will find it
harder to survive. There will be less water for animals to drink. and
since the water level is dropping, toxicity level is going to increase (
as the concentration of toxic materials increases). Ice roads are also
high maintainance, and this maintainance involves alot of physical and
environmental damages. If the ice roads happen to melt, the mix of what
used to be ice and the exhaust of vehicles will run off and contaminate
the soil and water which will not be a very pleasant thing.
For both types of roads , trucks cause damages in the following ways:
1. the warming we talked about that will cause the thawing of the
permafrost near the surface.
2. physical damage, footprints, the museum effect we discussed.
3. Pollution
__________________________________________________
After we researched all of the above, we found some very nice summaries
that summarize all of the COLLECTIVE CUMULATIVE effects of both building
the road and pipeline.
Oct. 13, 2003 - Farah
and Rashida researched aspects of impact evaluation in
the library. Farah has summarized her findings as follows:
Risk Assessment is defined as assigning magnitudes and probabilities
to
the adverse effects of human activities or natural catastrophes. The
scope of Environmental assessment includes:
1. The disclosure of the effects of a particular action as well as
damage assessment. Damage assessment can range anywhere between
obtaining counts of dead organisms to combinations of laboratory
toxicity testing, exposure modeling and field monitoring of sites.
2. The comparison of actions. Usually, when assessing a problem, it is
useful to compare a line of action with alternatives. The purpose behind
this method is to enable decisionmakers to balance environmental effects
against their other considerations when making their decision.
3. Prioritization of Hazards: When considering a widescale problem, it's
extremely difficult to take into consideration all of the problems right
away. Thus, when conducting an environmental evaluation, it is important
to prioritize the hazards and address the most pressing issues first.
4. Dichotomous Regulations: This is when a yes/no decision has to be
made with regardto the use of a particular chemical or the conduction
of
a particular process. If that chemical/process is near the threshold of
acceptability, it also becomes important to clarify what the expected
effects are, and what is the likelihood that the threshold would be
exceeded.
5. Scaler Regulation: As opposed to dichotomous regulation, here, the
use of a chemical or the carrying out of a process is not either clearly
acceptable or clearly unacceptable. In these cases, a decision needs to
be made about where (in terms of exposure to doses, how far to go with
a
process) the line between acceptability and inacceptability lies.
6. Explanation of Observed Degradation: Here, instead of starting with
a
particular action and trying to predict the effects, we start with
observed environmental degradation and then attempt to find the causal
action.
7. Issue definition and Research Planning: Issue definition is basically
the assessment of a preceived environmental problem where damage to the
environment HAS NOT been demonstrated.
8. Habitat Assessment: This is the assessment of the suitability of an
ecosystem as a habitat for a particular species.
9. Estimation of the Benefits of Protection or Remediation: This entails
estimating the benefits of protection (in addition to its cost) and
doing the same thing for remediation, then deciding which is best.
10. Protection of Human Health -- self explanatory.
So these are points that we should keep in mind when conducting our
evaluation.
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