NOT

IN
A N Y O N E ' S
K Y A R D ?
BAC
BY CARRIE BLACKMORE SMITH ILLUSTRATION BY DANTE TERZIGNI

A new pressurized natural gas pipeline pitted

DUKE ENERGY against HAMILTON COUNTY RESIDENTS
who didn’t want it running under their streets
or near their schools. With construction completed,
the focus now shifts to safe operations.
60
P H OTO G R A P H S BY J O N AT H A N W I L L I S M A R C H 2 0 2 2 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M 6 1
 THE

J
PIP E L I N E USTIN AND ANN FELDMAN USED TO LOVE
their home in Reading, until Duke Energy construct-
ed a high-pressure natural gas pipeline under Mar-

T I M E L I N E ket Street in front of it. “The scariest part is that if

that line was cracked and would catch fire and would
explode,” says Justin Feldman, his voice rising, “we
could be incinerated.” The Feldmans’ daughter and
grandchildren also live on the pipeline route, deepening their fears.
FEBRUARY 2016: Duke Energy For nearly six years, the Feldmans fought Duke Energy over
Ohio sends its first letter to Hamilton
County property owners who might be the construction of the C314V Central Corridor Pipeline. Many in
impacted by a new high-pressure Hamilton County did, from local high schoolers to seniors to poli-
natural gas pipeline. ticians. Nearly every community on the route intervened. But the
fight came to an end in September, with a decision by the Supreme
SEPTEMBER 2016: Duke
Energy submits an application to the Court of Ohio to side with the Ohio Power Siting Board and grant
Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) for a Duke a certificate to build.
Certificate of Environmental “The decision is a disappointment,” said a statement from city
Compatibility and Need to build C314V
leaders in Blue Ash, who, along with the municipalities of Read-
Central Corridor Pipeline.
ing and Evendale and a grassroots opposition group, argued their
AUGUST 2017: Duke Energy case to the state supreme court. “The City put up a strong fight to
asks the OPSB for additional time to protect the community and its residents.”
examine site-specific matters. Nearly
all communities along the route have
asked to intervene in the upcoming
state hearing, as well as school districts,
including Sycamore; environmental
groups; and business and religious
leaders.

STREET FIGHTERS
ANN AND JUSTIN FELDMAN
PHOTOGRAPHED IN FRONT OF
THEIR HOUSE IN READING ON
JANUARY 31, 2022.

62
PHOTOGRAPH BY DYLAN BAUER
 Now it’s done. The final weld of the ap- “THIS WHOLE PROCESS
proximately 13-mile pipeline was made on
December 14, and it now lies a minimum HAS DESTROYED MY FAITH
of four feet underground from the south-
ern border of Butler County through the IN GOVERNMENT,” SAYS
Hamilton County communities of Syca-
more Township, Blue Ash, Sharonville, JUSTIN FELDMAN.
Evendale, Reading, Amberley Village, Golf
Manor, and Cincinnati, ending at Duke’s
C350 Norwood Station.
Safety has always been opponents’ biggest concern. An average
of 11 people die each year in pipeline incidents, according to 10-
year tracking by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline
and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Duke plans to have the pipeline operational by early March,
with restoration projects along the route wrapping up this spring.
Company leaders reiterate that they’ve exceeded federal safety re-
quirements and have the track record to operate the pipeline safely.
Statistically, now that the pipeline is in the ground, the biggest
danger may be, well, the rest of us.
APRIL 2018: Duke asks the
OPSB to restart the process of approval.
APRIL 2019: The OPSB holds a
three-day hearing on the application.
NOVEMBER 2019: The OPSB
approves the project but throws in a bit
of a curveball, selecting an alternative
route, not Duke’s preferred route in its
application.
JANUARY 2020: Opponents file
for a rehearing, arguing Duke did not
perform due diligence in plotting the
alternative route before the OSPB gave
the green light. The board denies the
appeal.
SEPTEMBER 2020: Duke files a
199-page amended application, granted
permission to do so by the OPSB.
MARCH 2021: The OPSB accepts
the amended application. Construction
begins. Blue Ash, Reading, Evendale, and
NOPE appeal the Ohio Power Siting
Board’s decision to the Ohio Supreme
Court, which accepts the case but does
not require Duke to stop construction.
SEPTEMBER 2021: The Ohio
Supreme Court issues a unanimous
opinion acknowledging the OSPB didn’t
follow its own administrative rules but
concurring with the OPSB’s decision to
grant a certificate to build.
DECEMBER 2021: Duke
completes the last weld on the Central
Corridor Pipeline.
P H OTO G R A P H S BY J O N AT H A N W I L L I S
G
LENN ROSEN COULDN’T BELIEVE WHAT HE WAS READING. IT
was February 2016, and one of Duke’s first pipeline letters
had arrived at his Blue Ash home on Bleuwing Terrace—one
of hundreds of households to receive the notice. “We are writing
to inform you of a proposed natural gas pipeline project being de-
signed in order to increase the reliability and dependability of the
natural gas delivery system in the area,” the letter read. “Providing
safe, reliable natural gas is a responsibility we at Duke Energy take
very seriously. This pipeline will ensure natural gas reliability for
the next generation in Hamilton County.”
Rosen began googling 30-inch pipelines, as described in the let-
ter, and soon landed on news articles about explosions, including
one in 2010 in San Bruno, California, that leveled a residential neigh-
borhood, killed eight people, and injured 58. Federal investigators
determined the utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric, caused
the explosion with flawed record-keeping and sloppy maintenance.
“I realized this was a huge deal,” Rosen says, recalling his initial
thoughts. He began going door to door to consult his neighbors
and became one of the founding members of the grassroots orga-
nization Neighbors Opposing Pipeline Extension (NOPE), which
fought Duke to the Ohio Supreme Court. NOPE’s membership
grew into the hundreds, and it organized public forums to rally
regional politicians, school and business leaders, academic experts,
environmentalists, and others who opposed the project. It helped
get more than 1,000 letters of opposition filed against Duke’s ap-
plication for a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and
Public Need from state regulators. There are no local votes taken
on these matters.
In general, NOPE believed the pipeline was unnecessary and
irresponsible. Many saw the plan as a money-making deal for Duke
and not a benefit to the people it endangered. NOPE worked with
experts to calculate a “blast zone” to qualify and quantify what
was at stake, pointing out that all of the proposed pipeline routing
options went by schools, churches, work, and business centers.
One jogged right by Jewish Hospital and Kenwood Towne Centre.
The route Rosen’s house was on would get dropped early in the
process, but he and others continued to fight. It wasn’t a “NIMBY”
(not in my backyard) issue, but a not-in-anyone’s-yard one, he says.
The Central Corridor Pipeline was constructed to move natural
gas to customers in Hamilton County from a northern pipeline in
Butler County. Duke officials said the company needed to build the
pipeline, originally estimated to cost $110 million, in order to retire
two propane caverns and not risk putting some customers out of
service. The pipeline must be pressurized to move and balance gas
through the system, though the amount of pressure necessary was
always part of the public debate. CONTINUED ON PAGE 86
NOT IN ANYONE’S BACKYARD?
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 63
Duke initially estimated the project
would be completed by 2018, but com-
munity backlash held it up, with a drawn-
out application process that involved the
community clamoring for more public par-
ticipation and an eight-month delay at the
company’s request.
After a three-day hearing in Columbus,
the Ohio Power Siting Board granted Duke a
certificate to build in November 2019. The
board included the chair of the Public Utili-
ties Commission of Ohio, Sam Randazzo,
who stepped down in 2020 after becom-
ing ensnared in the House Bill 6 bribery
THE PIPELINE, SAYS DUKE ENERGY’S SALLY THELEN, IS
ABOUT “HAVING THE ABILITY TO UPGRADE INFRASTRUCTURE
WITHOUT TAKING PEOPLE OUT OF SERVICE.”
scandal; FirstEnergy Corp. admitted to giv-
ing him millions of dollars in consulting
fees and bribes.
NOPE and others responded with a for-
mal request for a rehearing, arguing that
Duke hadn’t done its due diligence related
to required details of the pipeline route
OPSB selected—not Duke’s preferred
route, but an alternate one. The OPSB said
no to a new hearing, and NOPE members
and the communities of Blue Ash, Reading,
and Evendale appealed that decision to the
Ohio Supreme Court. The court accepted
the case but did not put a stay on construc-
tion, so Duke kept building.
In September 2021, the court concurred
with the Ohio Power Siting Board that
Duke proved it needed to build the pipeline.
NOPE may have lost the pipeline war in
the end, but group member Jared Newman,
a Blue Ash resident, says the movement
prevailed in a few ways. After the commu-
8 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M M A R C H 2 0 2 2
nity rallied, Duke scaled down the size of
the pipeline from 30 inches to 20, pressur-
izing it up to 400 pounds per square inch
instead of its initial 600 psi maximum.
The company’s then-president of Ohio
and Kentucky, Jim Henning, announced
that “based on the 2,900 comments we re-
ceived, we think we have put forth the best
solution for the community.”
Newman says the Ohio Power Siting
Board got a slap on the wrist from the state
supreme court for not following its own
rules, which perhaps will improve the pro-
cess for future pipeline applications. He’s
talking about the segment of Chief Justice
Maureen O’Connor’s opinion that agreed
with NOPE, Reading, and Blue Ash. (Even-
dale exited the case before the court made
its ruling.) She said Duke had not provided
all of the materials required in the state ap-
plication to prove it had fully investigated
the route ultimately chosen by the Ohio
Power Siting Board. “While an agency has
a certain amount of discretion in adopting
rules to carry out the legislative objective,
agencies should not be permitted to ‘pick
and choose’ which rules they will follow,”
her opinion reads. “Failing to be consistent
in the execution of administrative rules af-
fects the citizens of our state and does a
disservice to our system of government.”
Still, the court decided that Reading,
Blue Ash, and NOPE had not proven they
were harmed by the state agency’s error
and concurred with its decision that Duke
should be granted a certificate to build.
DUKE’S REASONS FOR NEEDING TO
build the Central Corridor haven’t changed
since the beginning, says Sally Thelen, the
company’s longtime local spokesperson. “It
has always been about us needing to retire
the propane caverns and needing to balance
our supply in our system and to have the
ability to upgrade infrastructure without
having to take people out of service,” she
says. “Without this kind of pipeline down
the backbone of the county, we wouldn’t
have been able to do that.”
The Ohio Power Siting Board, too, placed
retiring the 60-year-old propane peaking
stations—another name for the caverns—
at the top of its reasons for approval. Thelen
says Duke has operated the stations, which
are located hundreds of feet underground,
about 10 days each year to supplement the
region’s natural gas supply—usually on the
coldest days when natural gas demands are
high. “We would lose 50,000 customers if
we were to lose a propane cavern,” she says.
“These are antiquated technology that we
need to get off of our system so we aren’t
reliant, frankly, on something we don’t have
a lot of control over.”
If something went wrong with one of the
limestone caverns, it would need to be re-
tired immediately, Thelen says, which could
cause long outages. “I wouldn’t want to be
the somebody who has to figure out which
50,000 customers aren’t going to get gas.”
As for safety measures on the pipeline
itself, Thelen says Duke has gone beyond
what’s required, including doubling the
thickness of C314V’s steel walls. The com-
pany X-rayed every weld and will monitor
the pipeline 24/7 with scheduled inspec-
tions, she says. In its initial application to
the state, the public utility company prom-
ised to keep records for all repairs, inspec-
tions, and patrols.
In addition, Thelen says, Duke installed
remote control shut-off valves every 2.5
miles along the pipeline and in strategic
locations to be able to shut it down more
quickly in case of a leak. The pipeline will
be marked as close to the ground as is prac-
tical, which is standard, but the company
also installed warning strips in the dirt
above the pipeline so that anyone who
might dig should hit the warning strip first.
Pipelines are quite safe in the U.S., says
Michelle Michot Foss, a fellow in energy,
minerals, and materials at Rice Universi-
ty’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Be-
ing underground, for one, protects them
better than other forms of our energy in-
frastructure.
“For the most part, all of our system is
state of the art,” Foss says, explaining that
the U.S. began regulating public utilities
early on and the result was a fairly stan-
dardized and regulated industry. If you
look hard at the data, she says, ruptures
or explosions usually occur because of
an outside force like construction or an
earthquake. It’s almost never a failure of
the pipeline itself. “It is always, always
injury to the pipeline, and homeowners
are some of the worst,” says Foss. “That
campaign to Call 811 Before You Dig was
one of the best inventions ever.”

NONE OF THESE STEPS REALLY BRING

any comfort to the Feldmans, who live on
the pipeline route and spent six months
of 2021 dealing with construction noise
and dust. By the pipeline’s mid-Decem-
ber wrap-up, nine months into construc-
tion, 40 complaints had been logged, in-
cluding litter from construction workers
and air quality concerns.
The Feldmans say it wasn’t just the
love for their home that they lost. “This
whole process has destroyed my faith in
government and destroyed my faith in
democracy,” says Justin Feldman.
His community of Reading did fight
all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court,
but in the end Feldman says he feels like
the entire process was rigged. He was a
little guy, powerless to stop any of it. It
drives him nuts, too, that as a Duke cus-
tomer he’ll help pay for the project.
Duke originally estimated the project
would cost $110 million, though Thelen
says the company will have a final figure in
the spring when all work is completed; she
doesn’t yet know how much of the cost
will start showing up on customers’ bills
or when. Duke will submit its total project
costs to the Public Utilities Commission
of Ohio, which will determine what is re-
coverable for company. That amount will
then be spread out over months or years
to customers, Thelen says.
Rosen, from NOPE, says nothing will
convince him that the Hamilton County
outcomes weren’t predetermined despite
the hearings and court consideration.
But both he and Newman say they’d lead
the fight again. “If somebody sent me a
postcard telling me a pipeline was going
through my backyard, I’d do the same
thing again,” says Rosen. “It’s about pro-
tecting yourself and protecting others
around you.”

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