Olde Oaks natural gas pipeline causes Concern

The Bossier Parish Police Jury has agreed to let a local developer build a residential neighborhood over a natural gas pipeline, which some jurors and local residents say raises concerns about safety and liability.

"I wouldn't put my house on top of it, not with my family," said Jason Reid, a resident of the Olde Oaks subdivision in Bossier Parish, where the pipeline is. The pipeline, an eight-inch supply line owned by Chesapeake Energy Corp., runs under a roughly 70 acre undeveloped parcel in Olde Oaks.

James Harris, of the Twin Peaks Land Management Co., the developer building Olde Oaks, said he planned to build roughly 50 houses on the land. Eight of those houses' property would be over the pipeline. Harris also is a member of the Bossier City-Parish Metropolitan Planning Commission.

"We want what the MPC and the Police Jury want," Harris said. "We want what's safe for the homeowner."

The Police Jury has been discussing the situation for several months with police jurors, expressing concern about the potential for an explosion.

"I can't with a good conscience vote to put one (pipeline) in a subdivision," Police Juror Brad Cummings, who is in the oil and gas industry, said in February. "I'm sorry."

There are literally hundreds of oil and natural gas pipelines crisscrossing Bossier Parish, many of which are under or near residential neighborhoods. The difference in this case, however, is that the pipeline already exists before the development goes over it, possibly raising liability concerns for the Police Jury since it is the body that approved the homes.

Harris has told the Police Jury that his crews already have hit and ruptured the pipe once. Built in or about 1943, the original lease agreement only required the pipe to be laid "below plow depth."

Harris has since lowered the pipe to 16 feet below the surface, and all parties have agreed in principle to maintain a 30-foot easement — 15 feet on both sides — from the property lines of the adjacent homes.

But as several police jurors have noted, 15 feet would do little to abate an explosion anywhere near the size of the one in Carthage, Texas, in February. That explosion forced the evacuation of people about a mile and a half away.

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