Trouble on the Longhorn Pipeline?

Austin Chronicle
November 26, 2004

Questions about the Longhorn Pipeline's safety, its age, its proximity to neighborhoods, and its intersection with the Edwards Aquifer - all raised repeatedly throughout six years of unsuccessful legal battles and public protest - were revisited last week as unconfirmed reports that the embattled petroleum line might be leaking began emanating from Bastrop County.

At about 5:15am on a mid-September Sunday morning, Leonard Philipp was abruptly awakened by a truck barreling past his house down the private driveway on his Bastrop ranch. "I got my gun and went to see who it was," Philipp recalls. "Outside, I had a little confrontation." Philipp said the unannounced work crew explained they were contracted for the Longhorn Pipeline, and that their haste was due to an urgent necessity to locate a device, used to detect weaknesses in its metal piping, on its way through the line.

The contractors told Philipp "they were replacing metal coating on the line." He says the workers also told him in passing that the type and grade of metal in the Bastrop portion of the line is below current federal regulations. Adding to the landowner's apprehension, parts of the problem area on the ranch lie on a rocky hill descending to a bend in the Colorado River. The gravelly soil's tendency to allow rapid leaching plus the site's close proximity to the river have Philipp especially concerned - moreover, the flooded pipeline ditch is now an impassable moat separating Philipp from his barn.

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