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The Gulf Conservation Coalition was formed recently to address the threats created by the U.S. Department of Energy's (D.O.E.) plan to expand the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) with the creation of a new storage site in Perry County near Richton, Mississippi (also called the Richton Salt Dome Project.)  As currently planned, the project would significantly harm the Pascagoula River, the Mississippi Sound, and the Gulf of Mexico near our barrier islands.

We invite you to become familiar with the proposed project and join with us in assuring that, if the project is ultimately constructed, it will be done in a manner that minimizes the damage to our natural resources here on the coast and along the Pascagoula River.

Your help is needed to make a positive change to the current plan.

The Current Plan for the Richton SPR Project

The Department of Energy plans to hollow out a massive salt dome near Richton, Mississippi and fill it with 160 million barrels of oil as an addition to our nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.  This may sound fine in general.  But, it’s the “devil in the details” that causes alarm.

50 million gallons of water per day will be drawn from our Pascagoula River for five years. This fresh water will be used to dissolve salt inside the dome, using a technique called solution mining.

The resulting toxic salt slurry, an ultra-high salinity brine (263 parts salt per thousand parts water, the maximum amount that can be dissolved) will be pumped through a pipeline from Perry County to the Gulf and discharged near the Pascagoula Ship Channel just outside Horn and Petit Bois Islands.

How This Affects Us

Loss of Water from the Pascagoula River

Environmentally speaking, removal of that much water (50 million gal/day) from the Pascagoula River, in itself, will have a dramatic, if not catastrophic, effect on the health of the river and its inhabitants. Any time there is a reduction in the river levels, nature will try to maintain its level by pulling from the salty gulf waters thus raising salinity levels.  Economically speaking, the loss of this much river water will affect Jackson County’s ability to support its current and future industries with fresh water.

The use of fresh water for this project seems to be quite illogical when neighboring Georgia plans to spend millions of dollars to turn Atlantic salt water into fresh water to relieve their severe water shortage.  In other SPR storage sites (and for other alternatives studied by DOE) the brine solution was discharged into subsurface injection wells.

Salt Water Intrusion

Salt water intrusion will cause destruction of key wildlife habitats and its inhabitants. Louisiana is seeing this firsthand.

Brine Disposal Damage

The disposal of the salt near our shores will create a dead zone due to its extreme saline content.  The anticipated extent of this dead zone is unclear; even DOE says that it could cover as much as 3.5 square miles.  In their analysis, DOE failed to account for tides and winds in predicting where the brine will go.   Incoming tides and south winds would carry the brine solution into the Mississippi Sound where the effect on delicate marine systems would be dramatic.

The impact on fishing and shrimping due to the higher water salinity could be significant. It should be noted that in two of the other four existing SPR sites in Louisiana and Texas, the brine solution was disposed of by deep well injection, instead of dumping it into the Gulf of Mexico.

Pipeline Spills

Under the current plan, more than 300 miles of pipeline will cross 63 creeks, streams and rivers.  DOE predicts more than 75 brine spills during the construction of the project as now planned.  The D.O.E. environmental impact statement shows that during the 20 year history of the four existing SPR sites, the average size of each brine spill was more than 280,000 gallons. These spills jeopardize the fresh water supplies for south Mississippi communities and can substantially damage the river and the surrounding lands.

GULF CONSERVATION COALITION POSITION STATEMENT

The Gulf Conservation Coalition is not opposed to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Project, but, is opposed to the method proposed to develop the SPR site near Richton, Mississippi. This opposition is based on the environmental and economic losses that will be incurred by the southern counties of Mississippi, greatly offsetting any benefits.  Jackson County will bear the brunt of these impacts and can expect the following economic impacts from the project.

• Only ten new jobs in return for providing a 49-acre tank farm site and deep water dock for oil tankers on Singing River Island.   (From the D.O.E. environmental statement.) Forty nine acres and a deep water dock could easily provide employment for 500 to1,000 people with a typical port industry.  Look at the existing sites in Pascagoula.
• The loss of 50 million gallons of fresh water per day for five years from the Pascagoula River. (From the D.O.E. environmental statement.) This loss will affect Jackson County’s ability to support its current and future industry with fresh water and will cause lowered water tables for supply of the area’s drinking water.
• The losses to the commercial fishing and shrimping industries due to the higher water salinity from the 80 billion gallons of salt brine to be discharged near the Pascagoula Ship Channel.
• The losses to the local recreational fishing industry from the higher water salinity levels.

The environmental impacts from this project could be worse than the economic impacts.  And large environmental impacts usually turn into further economic impacts. Wasting 50 million gallons of water per day from the Pascagoula River by turning that into a salt brine and dumping that brine into our fishing and recreational grounds makes no sense. And the DOE admits that the four existing D.O.E. petroleum storage sites experienced 227 brine leaks averaging 280,000 gallons per spill during their 20 years of construction and operation. The D.O.E. also states that the Richton SPR project is expected to have a total of 56 brine spills and 19 saltwater spills. The damage could be huge.

The current plan needs to be changed to eliminate the taking of water from the Pascagoula River and the discharge of salt brine into the Gulf of Mexico, to save our paradise.

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