Wingspan of the Falcon Pipeline
A Public EIA of Shell’s Ethane Cracker Pipeline
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Jan. 29 – FracTracker Alliance has released a detailed environmental impact assessment (EIA), including digital maps, of the Falcon Ethane Pipeline being built to feed Shell Appalachia’s ethylene cracker plant in Beaver County, PA.
FracTracker’s Falcon Public EIA Project offers a rich series of interactive maps and articles detailing the Falcon’s proposed route through PA, WV, and OH, likely impacts to waterways, potential blast zones, ecological footprint, proximity to hazardous industrial areas, and more.
Given the issues associated with Mariner East 2 – a PA-based natural gas liquids pipeline whose history has been fraught with citations, public scrutiny is a crucial facet of pipeline construction. The Falcon Public EIA Project represents the first time that public stakeholders have been given such a significant amount of time and detail to investigate a proposed pipeline, including access to specific location information. Public comments are being accepted by the PA Department of Environmental Protection on the Falcon’s permit until February 20th.
“Companies are generally not required to publicly disclose GIS data when applying for permits,” remarked Kirk Jalbert, project lead and Manager of Community Based Research and Engagement at FracTracker. “While concerned citizens can stitch together paper maps provided by companies in their applications, that process can be complex and very labor intensive.”
With FracTracker’s project, however, digital maps and figures are front and center.
Early access to what is being proposed for the Falcon pipeline will enable nearby communities to better understand how its construction and the associated ethane cracker facility, which will produce 1 million tons of ethylene annually for making plastics, will affect their lives. Upon analyzing the data, FracTracker uncovered a number of particularly noteworthy statistics, for example:
- There are 97.5 miles of pipeline proposed to be built through 22 townships in 3 states.
- 2,000 properties have been surveyed; 765 easements executed.
- Falcon will intersect 319 streams and 174 wetlands, with hundreds more proximate to work areas.
- 550 family residences, 20 businesses, 240 groundwater wells, 12 public parks, 5 schools, 6 daycare centers, and 16 emergency response centers are within potential risk areas.
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“Extreme levels of risk and injustice are commonplace in petrochemical pipeline siting, as well as in where their contents come from and how they get used. This project provides context for the importance of reducing these impacts, both for curtailing environmentally unfriendly plastics as well as for moving away from fossil fuel dependencies,” said Brook Lenker, Executive Director of FracTracker.
The Falcon Public EIA Project is meant to expand public dialogue about what should be included in EIAs and how they should apply to petrochemical pipelines. The project also serves as a model for how regulatory agencies can be more transparent with data when engaging the public. This is especially important in the case of the Falcon pipeline, which will be exempt from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) scrutiny and, therefore, not be subject to a full environmental impact assessment.
