Eye from the sky: discerning pipeline impacts in farmland soils
As unconventional gas drilling (fracking) and its transport infrastructure (pipelines) has surged over the past decade, research into their social costs and impacts continues to emerge. Risks and harms of fracking to human health have been well documented; studies of high-profile pipeline projects show concerning aggregated trends; and proximity to fracking infrastructure is a known property value impact. However, as pipelines traverse hundreds of miles across rural landscapes bisecting significant acreage of farmlands, local and disaggregated impacts to individual farm parcels is just beginning to emerge.
The absence of significant documentation and research into farmland impacts is likely due to several factors. First, farmland by its very nature is situated in rural landscapes, easily overlooked by the public at large. Second, the current fracking pipeline buildout is a recent phenomena, barely more than a decade old. Farmers have, by and large, had little time to organize and bring impacts to the public’s attention. Third, while the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) includes discussion of land uses in their environmental review process of proposed pipeline projects, the analysis is largely perfunctory, fully accepting of pipeline applicant assurances that impacts will be temporary, usually limited to ‘one growing season’, if at all. Robust inquiry of farmland impacts by federal and state agencies is severely lacking.
In spite of these challenges, several studies are now underway, and individual farm impacts are indeed starting to surface. In New Jersey, spanning 2008–2012, crop yield documentation was established at Fulper Farms which clearly demonstrates a spatial correlation between a pipeline alignment and very low crop yield.
In Lancaster County, PA (2014), farmer Mervin D. Shenk documented low crop yields spatially correlated to a pipeline alignment on his corn fields. As Shenk states “My experience with pipelines is (productivity) is never the same over those areas.” Also in 2014, Lancaster County, a gathering of farmers sponsored by the Lancaster Farmland Trust and Lancaster County Conservancy discussed easement agreement strategies faced with the proposed Williams Partners’ Atlantic Sunrise pipeline. One of the impact topics discussed was ‘heat bleed’ — as fracked gas pipelines are under significant pressure, invariably heat is produced which can impact crops, especially those requiring specific soil temperature ranges for optimum crop yield. In 2015, The College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at The Ohio State University began a new study for potential impacts of pipeline installations on farm soils. A particular feature of this study is the relatively large study sample size and duration- 20 to 30 farmers with a pipeline installation on farmland, monitoring crop yields for 3 to 5 years. In 2017, a S.W. Georgia farmer situated along the 515 mile Sabal Trail Pipeline documented severe damage to his farm particularly from topsoil remediation practices by the pipeline company, Sabal Trail Transmission. This damage has remained largely unmitigated. As Randy Dowdy, the farmer states:
The project inspectors that should have been responsible for proper preventative measures to avert these problems and responsible for the restoration/reconstruction process are employees of the pipeline contractor, so whose best interest did they have in mind?
A little over an hour north of New York City in the famed Black Dirt Region of Orange County, New York, one local farmer has been battling the Millennium Pipeline Co LLC since 2008 when it installed a 182 mile mainline pipeline across the Southern Tier of New York.
Farmers in the Black Dirt Region typically farm onions in the rare, unique peat soil formation of this region where the integrity of the topsoil has to be maintained. Following the installation of the Millennium mainline in 2008 at the farm of James Bastek, crops on the right-of-way (ROW) of the pipeline alignment have, year after year, either failed completely or shown significant yield decrease compared to those areas of farmland untouched by the pipeline.
In order to quantify on-the-ground, visible impacts on the Bastek farm, first the pipeline had to be accurately mapped via historical FERC application filings. Once mapped, the ROW of the pipeline trenched area & topsoil displacement area was determined. Finally, remote sensing techniques were deployed to ascertain crop vegetative cover both ON ROW and OFF ROW. These three steps were then verified with qualitative and ground-truth methods (large scale drone imagery coupled with photo documentation) to ascertain consistency of impacts across all approaches.
To determine the exact alignment of the Millennium Pipeline installed in 2008 across the Black Dirt region, a process of GIS georeferencing was initiated using the original project alignment sheets culled from project’s FERC docket in conjunction with high resolution basemap imagery served from the NYS GIS Clearinghouse.
Once accomplished, the project alignment and ROW areas were determined, producing the pipeline alignment features as well as ROW distances in vector format. This process was critical to gaining an exact recreation of the original pipeline installation so that both ON ROW and OFF ROW areas could be accurately accessed.
Following the georeference process and alignment mapping, remote sensing imagery techniques were employed. The specific analysis consisted of applying a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) function onto high-resolution imagery during growth seasons. The unprocessed imagery product was procured from the USDA NAIP program which offers a near-infrared product of suitable spatial and temporal resolution. The final product chosen possesses a temporal resolution in the New York growing season dated 07/05/2011 at 0.5-meter spatial resolution. Although NDVI analysis was not performed for a pre-installment period as a temporally suitable near-infrared product is not readily available, a true color product from New York State’s orthoimagery program was utilized for visual comparison to conditions prior to pipeline installment (2007).
As seen in the NDVI processed imagery above (left), there is a marked pattern of lower NDVI values (purples, less vegetative cover) both northeast as well as northwest of the red pipeline alignment as it crosses the Bastek farm. As this result has been derived from imagery with a temporal resolution at height of growing period, these lower values represent crop yield either diminished irrevocably or ‘behind’ schedule. This pattern is consistent approximately 50 feet outwards from the alignment where the Millennium Pipeline installment intersects with the Bastek farmland.
The quantified, remote-sensed results derived from the mapping methodology were further ground truthed through both drone imagery and photo-documentation derived at the Bastek farm along the alignment ROW. Collected during the ‘harvest’ period at the end of the late Summer/early Fall growing season, a healthy crop yield would appear to be brownish, deadened vegetative cover with healthy, large onion bulbs.
As seen in the image to the left, the crop yield at locations that do not intersect with the pipeline alignment are indeed characterized as brownish, deadened tops with robust onion bulbs at the bottom. However, crop yield atop the pipeline alignment is either completely missing or immature with greenish tops and attenuated bulb formation at the bottom. In effect, any crop yield produced atop the pipeline alignment ROW is severely immature and unviable for market.
Utilizing drone imagery taken slightly above the pipeline ROW, the demarcation between ON ROW vs. OFF ROW harvest yield cover is discernible as noted with red arrows in the image to the left. This pattern is consistent with the remote sensing analysis which found significant NDVI value differences between ON ROW and OFF ROW crop areas earlier in the growing season.
From both the Bastek farm analysis and emerging reports and studies, it is indeed evident that fracked gas pipelines carry significant risk to farmland, especially crops yields that rely on topsoil integrity. While the industry downplays these impacts and the FERC analysis and regulatory process is woefully inadequate to deliver successful mitigation practices, the ramifications for local farmers already faced with growing economic and climate change challenges are severe.
To underscore the gravity of the situation, Millennium Pipeline’s legal representation Cullen and Dykman LLP estimated 2008–2010 crop yield loss on the Bastek farm to be $439,493.34. From interviews with Bastek, he has shown documentation suggesting the losses to be much greater, approaching millions of dollars. These are dollar figures that no individual farmer should have to negotiate on their own without a guiding agency or assigned representative to assist in negotiations with a powerful transnational corporation¹. Both state and federal agencies must develop better procedures to mitigate pipeline impacts to farmland; and importantly establish settlement protocol that correct the egregious inequity faced by Bastek and farmers like himself whose livelihoods are at risk from fracked gas pipelines.
