Public meetings set on planned pipeline

A planned pipeline that would cross miles of Hays County including through the Wimberley Valley will be the subject of a number of public meetings.

The first, called by Pct. 3 Commissioner Lon Shell, will be held Tuesday, Jan. 29, at 5:30 p.m. in the Wimberley Community Center, 14068 Ranch Road 12.

Kinder Morgan, the company building the pipeline, has scheduled four “open house” style meetings, all to begin at 6 p.m. The first will be Tuesday, Feb. 12 at the Wimberley Community Center. The others will be Wednesday, Feb. 13 at Wallace Middle School, 1500 West Center, Kyle; Wednesday, Feb. 20 at Old Blanco County Courthouse, 300 Main Street, Blanco; and Thursday, Feb. 21 at the Gillespie County Fairgrounds Exhibition Hall, 530 Fair Drive, Fredericksburg.

Shell said his meeting will concentrate on the basics. “We will share information about the planned route as well as discuss environmental concerns,” he said in a news release. “We want to share what we know now, what we expect, and to hear concerns from our residents.”

He said the meeting will include a panel of “experts in relevant areas and a presentation by representatives who have been working with landowners in the area.”

Representatives from Kinder Morgan have been invited, Shell said, but are not on the agenda.

Kinder Morgan said the undertaking, the Permian Highway Pipeline (PHP) Project, will transport natural gas in a 42-inch pipeline running 430 miles from Waha, Texas to the Gulf Coast and that company representatives will be on hand to answer questions and explain maps. 

That breaks down to about 2.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day and will generate an estimated 2,500 local construction jobs and 18 full-time jobs and that, when complete, “facilities constructed as part of the PHP Project will generate approximately $42 million of increased annual revenue to applicable state and local taxing bodies.”

The company also stressed that numerous state and federal agencies will need to sign off on the pipeline, including the Railroad Commission, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Texas Historical Commission, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Texas General Land Office and some Native American tribes.

The project’s timeline calls for civil and environmental surveys that began last September continuing into June, followed by beginning of construction in the fall and a proposed in-service date of the fourth quarter of 2020.

Opposition to the project has been fierce, led by a group that calls itself “Concerned Citizens and Landowners of the Wimberley Valley.” A member of the group, David Baker of the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association, was among signers of a letter that said in part, “The community needs to know that this pipeline will create a significant environment and economic impact to the Wimberley Valley residents … These can be classified as loss of property values, loss of county taxes, major threats to the water quality and our aquifers, threats to our oak forest, and increased noise and light pollution.”

Baker noted that the pipeline will go straight through “Primarily karst aquifer systems with lots of sink holes, caves and fault lines … The construction of the pipeline could cause irreparable damage to these features.”

He specifically mentioned potential harm to springs including Jacob’s Well.