This Crude Oil Pipeline Runs Right Under South Austin
There’s almost enough pipeline transporting crude oil and other chemicals buried under Texas to reach the moon and back. Last week, one small section of that infrastructure in Bastrop County was damaged by a maintenance crew. The result was a spill of more than 50,000 gallons of crude oil.
That wasn't the first time that particular pipeline, the Longhorn pipeline, raised concerns in Central Texas.
The pipeline's history can tell you a lot about how communities and pipelines change, and sometimes come in conflict. It was built to carry crude oil from the Permian Basin in West Texas to refineries in Houston way back in the 1950s – when the state was an entirely different place.
“Texas, obviously, is growing steadily in population and some once-remote areas where pipelines were the only thing in town are now seeing communities spring up around them,” says Bill Christian, a lawyer with Graves Dougherty Hearon & Moody who works on pipeline cases for landowners.
Read more: http://kut.org/post/crude-oil-pipeline-runs-right-under-south-austin