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Show By NICK SNOW When the Chevron Pipeline Company began work on three pipeline heating facilities, one at Kimball. Junction six miles north of Park City, they anticipated little or not reartion from the local citizenry. Now the pipeline division of Standard OU of California is threatened with possible lawsuits from residents and summer-cabi- n owners fearful that the very pollution they sought to escape . mountains. Accused of manipulation and deception, the pipeliner is anxious to maintain its unobtrusive place while servicing its Salt Lake (Sty customers. Concerned that the stations might destroy Summit, Wasatch and Duchesne Counties potential as mountain resort areas, citizens com-wou- ld . groups, and in particular the Park one-quart- er City-base- d Citizens for a Clean Summit Cbunty, are asking Chevron to pursue other alternatives. The citizens are wondering how you tell what appears to them a giant you don't want your air giant is polluted. And the how you quiet the wondering citizens down to tell them your side of the story. Hi-U- te . The Pipeliner Since it put the first pipeline through in 1948, Chevron has kept in the background of the counties through which it pumps crude oil. There are now two lines pumping 3,000 barrels each hour. When Salt Lake refineries wanted thicker crude oil from two new fields, Wontsis and Red six-inc- h Wash, pumped, the pipeline company, which is an Interstate 120-fo- Commerce Commission common carrier, fotaid it possible to blend them with the crude oil coming from the pipelines east end in. Rangely. Colo. In 1970, throe new fields in Duchesne County Blue Bell, Altamont and Sink Pour opened up and the three refineries, services by the pipeline (Chevron, American and Phillips) asked that the oil from these fields be blended with the shipment from farther east. What had worked in the past didnt work this time. The crude we had going through the lines had a pour temperature of 95 degrees, explains Chevron Pipeline president, Ed Allen. "By com- parison, die crude from the three new fields is pour lower that than and it anything starts to solidify. 125-degr- ee I Site of the Kimball Jaacfioa pipettne keatlag plant Two Mack circles are bases fer storage tanks. Snyderville is in distance at right The amount of carrier crude" says we can have onand-a-hal- f oil oil thin enough to dilute the percent sulfur. Oir figures say thicker crude necessary to keep well be down to .016 percent. Not only is the ftrnace method the new blend running, even if we'd be able to manufacture it, the easiest it's the only realistic Stagg.anart teacher who lives in would flood the refineries. We just one, according to Allen. We went Synderville and who found the don't have a big enough market to to the gas company and they said pumping station almost in his they didnt have any natural gas back yard. My wife and I were to sell. As for electricity, I cant sitting in Ink, Paint k day, the remember any figures but I heard shop we own a share of, when a that the power wed have to use lady came in and asked if wed there would be about equal to the heard about the oil refinery going power it takes to service Park in down by Snyderville. So we We hours a day. dropped doqpi to City. That means putting up more started digging around. 300 barrels an hour, something we Stagg learned that Summit high tension lines. Whats that cant have happen if we expect to going to do for the scenery? .. County had been approached back The biggest misconception of in June with the proposal and had service those refineries. It's already starting to get cold again all is when someone thinks well issued building permits. They this year, the other day, we be burning similar to the just didnt think it was a very big down to 2,400 barrels." So refineries. That just isn't file case. filing, he said. Thats why there (hopped Chevron decided to take action. What you see at the refineries is were no hearings. But as far as the lowest were concerned, the permit still Originally, their plan called for what we cant sell laying a third, insulated line grade pitch. The crude we propose was issued illegally. lt didnt go alongside the other two. But since to bum is a much higher grade. through the county commission an environmental impact study between So, appearance (the itself, just the planning be required for the Uinta " lower chimney height and the mission. National Forest and since the locations The Short-cuttin- g is only one to one-ha- lf concern. CCSCs of would the have taken a year and mile off the road in areas you can area study 4.7 acres When they bought the a half in addition to the year see only from three or four places necessary to dig the line, the and then you have to be looking for from Paul Buehner, who sold it to pipeliner had to find some other projected emissions them to get access to his it) and thedon't have any bone to Ranch down the road, they didnt way to heat the crude oil. (they just Our engineers ran a study and pick with us there because were tell him what they were going to determined that if we located a so far inside the guidelines), do, Stagg added. Now that he fumance every 30 miles along the Allen says the thrust of the does know, he feds bad about it because its going to hurt him too. line, the oil would keep flowing. Citizens for a Clean Summit FYom the first furnace in Hanna, is Hes given us $100. emotional, County mostly where the crude is trucked in, that Weve sent people up to talk to Support from government on furnaces Woodland at levels has been spotty: we various and them but too been haven't put Kimball Junction. We really successful. Theyd ask a question, The Park City Council, notably didnt anticipate any problems our man would start answering, Councilwoman Mary Lehmer, because Mobil has a similar line and theyd be asking more have crane out in opposition to the from Bakersfield, Calif, to Los station. Only one of Summit questions before he could finish the sentence. Its a tragic thing Angeles. They have 12 stations Countys commissioners has we only have three and on their too, because l just dont see any taken a similar stance. And letters to Utahs congressional ddegation way into downtown L.A. they pass way where we can hurt those near back yards with no problem have produced only one response, people up there. We dont want at all, said Allen. that from senior Senator Wallace But there were problems around F. Bennett who told Oberhansly, Park City and Summit Park and I have noted in file file that you the Chevron executive says one have also written to the president of Standard Oil Company of aspect of them the height of the is own its fault. chimneys Curtis Oberhansly likens California and I hope you will be I'm afraid they (Citizens for a able to resolve this problem to fighting a subsidiary of Standard Clean Summit County) got the OU of Calircmia to slugging it out As for the Air Conservation figure from us, said Allen, with a 4,000 poind slug. You belt it of the State of Utah Committee because, in our original plans, with all youve got and it gives you that was how tall they were going the supposed watchdog of such zero response. It just keeps to be. A furnace is just like a Oberhansley said, My things plodding along at its own pace. considered fireplace. It has to have a draft. opinion is that theyre Yet the Salt Lake City lawyer is We wanted to get a natural one on the side of dean air. For. not working at half his usual rate with because we wanted no moving to the Citizens for a Clean Summit them sit on their thumbs while that could The fail. these parts higher plants are being built across Cbunty because he has an office in the state the chimney, the greater the infuriates me. Chevron Park City and plans to make his draft. So we made an application halted construction and, as home there. Also, he adds, I hasnt at 120 feet. Then the furnace I can far as tell, theres been no have a stake in dean air too. moratorium called. company came back with 83 Vi Oberhansly joined the battle feet. But since height seems to be (Under the laws of the State of shortly after the first meeting in Utah, the committee only rules on one of the biggest objections, City of the citizens group. facilities already violating Utahs were installing blowers and Park He listened to comparisons 30 to the feet. air quality standards. New lowering chimneys Chevron Pipeline spokesmen are reviewed by a Besides the chimneys, each as applications was made and as unimpressed furnace will have two 20,000 barrel staff of engineers, headed by Dr. other members of the Citizens for tanks as storage backups and a 25 Winn who told .The a Clean Summit County. Just Grant million BTU heater. We sent Mountain Flower that information -- PUM by Chevron don not some crude oil to the furnace plant are? They told to see if they couid burn it to meet become public until the apbe equal to those of a diesel truck state regulations and they came plication has been approved and a That's diesel, through. passing bade with the message that they that deliberations and the . stage could. The major pttfdf the law they've reached likewise are information.) . has followed them into the f OCTO BER 21. THE MOUNTAIN FLOWER PAGE ot f2.S!LS . not-publ- I 4 !! J M ; i i f i ic 172 In file space of ten days, the CCSC gathered 150 signatures from Park City, Synderville and Summit Park on a petition to Utahs governor, Calvin L. Rampton. Were asking that they not burn crude oil or anything and that they find an acceptable alternative that would not pollute the countryside. They want to do it this way because its the Oberhansly said. cheapest, Theyve never built a furnace exacly like this before anywhere, Stagg added. So they can't give us any definite emission factors because they just dont know. As for alternatives, they tell us they have no natural gas available. But they can heat it with electricity theres plenty of that. They keep telling us theyre concerned about the environment too. But when they came through in 1949 and put in the first pipeline, they didnt even bother to cover it up. And when they put another one through in 1950, the farmers threatened damage suits unless they did. They werent even aware that we have an almost constant temperature inversion where they plan to build. When we asked them to do an environmental impact study, they said they wouldnt that if other people dickit have to, they shouldn't have to either. - They even admitted, in our first meeting .that they could not guarantee that, within five years, if they hit more oil, they woulcbit be putting more furnaces in. They couldnt promise to keep it at a specific level. The feeling Stagg, his wife Suzzanne, Susan DeWitt and others got from the Chrvron spokesman, in fact, was essentially that they were putting it in and the hell with the rest of us. Our biggest fear, Stagg is that if this goes in, it may change the use of the land so added, that other commercial develop- ments will move in. And thats just what we were trying to get away from when we moved up here. The land-us- e factor may well be the most important aspect of all, r, according to Dr. David a research biologist in the University of Utah Department of Pathology and chairman of the Wasatch Front Air Quality Committee of the Uinta Chapter of the Sierra Club. My input was to tell of the current state of Stein-mulle- legislation . concerning air pollution in the state of Utah, Steinmiiler said. What he found near Park City was a two-fol- d concern. The first is the air pollution angle. There isn't much we can do there because Chevron appears to be .. within the letter of the law. It was, however, quite obvious from the start that they had failed to file a Continued ee Page 8 |