18 | GREENVILLE JOURNAL | 06.17.2016 GREENVILLEJOURNAL.COM
COMMUNITY Inside the Outside
Environmental issues facing the region by Shelley Robbins
Game On
Talking Points on Sports with Vincent Harris
What you need to know about pipelines
Catching thrills with Ultimate Frisbee
Petroleum and natural gas pipelines crisscross the Upstate like a spider web, moving fuel up the East Coast from the Gulf of Mexico and then down to the rest of the state. While these pipelines are critical to ensuring our fuel supply, they pose two serious threats.
Last week, when I spoke to Bob Mihalic, county spokesperson, he mentioned a summer youth sports program I wasn’t familiar with: Ultimate Frisbee. My curiosity was piqued, so when he mentioned that Greenville Rec was running the program in conjunction with a local organization called Greenville Ultimate, I decided to contact them and see what this game was all about.
The first is the very real possibility of leaks that poison our water and soil. The second is the taking of private property by private, forprofit companies using the power of eminent domain to claim a right of way on private and public land for their projects. This means that any new pipeline project must be carefully scrutinized to be sure that it is truly necessary. Pipelines have been making news in the Upstate starting with the Colonial Pipeline spill that dumped nearly 1 million gallons of diesel fuel into the Reedy River near Simpsonville in 1996. That spill resulted in Colonial paying $6.6 million to the state for restoration of the river. More recently, the Kinder Morgan Plantation Pipeline leaked over 250,000 gallons of gasoline in Belton in 2014, saturating the soil and infiltrating groundwater. That cleanup is ongoing, and a suit filed against the company may move to trial in 2017 if mediation is not successful. There is great risk associated with pipeline infrastructure demonstrated by the incidence of leaks and spills across the country. Even with this troubled history, new pipeline projects continue to surface in the Upstate. In 2015, Kinder Morgan announced its proposed Palmetto Pipeline, a $1 billion petroleum project stretching from Belton down to the ports of Savannah, Ga., and Jacksonville, Fla. And in March of this year, Dominion announced its intention to seek federal approval for a natural gas pipeline stretching from Moore in Spartanburg County down to Greenwood County. The type of fuel a pipeline will carry determines how easy it is for a company to use eminent domain, which is the right to claim private property for public use (with compensation). Natural gas pipelines are considered essential to the national power supply and are regulated by the federal government. Petroleum pipelines are not considered essential, and therefore companies must petition state governments for the right to use eminent domain for their projects. Georgia and South Carolina have opposed the Palmetto Pipeline project at both the grassroots and the Statehouse level. In March, Georgia passed a bill placing a temporary moratorium on the use of eminent domain by
pipeline companies. Gov. Nikki Haley signed a similar bill, which Upstate Forever supports, early this month. As a result, Kinder Morgan suspended the Palmetto Pipeline project. For the Dominion project, called the Transco to Charleston Project, Upstate Forever has partnered with the South Carolina Environmental Law Project to file a legal motion to intervene in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proceeding in order to protect water quality in the Upstate. The pipeline would potentially impact two conservation focus areas identified in Upstate Forever’s scientifically rigorous 2010 Special Places Inventory of Spartanburg County. Both of these pipelines raise issues about the export of fossil fuels as well as pipeline “overbuild,” spurred by currently plentiful and cheap shale gas. There is a facility owned by Kinder Morgan near the Port of Savannah that can liquefy natural gas for tanker export. Such facilities are beginning to proliferate in the Gulf of Mexico. After decades of relying on imported fossil fuels, it appears that the United States is poised to become an exporter, though there is currently a glut of inexpensive natural gas in the international market. Upstate Forever will continue to monitor developments that impact our 10 counties and work to protect the clean water we all enjoy. For the U.S. Energy Information Administration tool that shows South Carolina’s energy infrastructure, please visit eia.gov/state/?sid=SC.
Shelley Robbins is a sustainable communities project manager at Upstate Forever
The first thing I learned from Greenville Ultimate’s Chris Billman is that Ultimate Frisbee (sometimes simply called “Ultimate”) isn’t a new sport by any means. In fact, it’s been around since the ‘60s. Amherst College students Jared Kass, Bob Fein, Richard Jacobson, Robert Marblestone, Steve Ward, Fred Hoxie and Gordon Murray evolved a team Frisbee game based on concepts from American football, basketball and soccer. The second thing I learned is that Ultimate is about as far from casually tossing a disc back and forth as you can get. “It’s a very specific sport,” Billman says. “It’s played on a field that looks more or less like a football field. It has two end zones on either side. The game is played seven on seven. You pass it to your teammates, and as soon as one of them catches it, they have to set a pivot foot and pass it to someone else. You can’t run with it. You score when you complete a pass into the end zone. You play to a set score, which is usually 15.” But wait, it gets even tougher. “Anything that’s not a completion, meaning even if it hits a teammate or goes out of bounds, it’s a turnover,” Billman says. Greenville Ultimate, which Billman became a part of in 2010, runs the eight-team league throughout the year, and Greenville Rec provides the fields of play. And in some situations, the partnership goes beyond that. “We put in a bid to host the high school ‘Southerns’ (Southern regional championships), which is pretty much as close as high school teams get to a national championship,” Billman says. “The country’s divided up into quarters, and the entire
Photo by Christina Schmidt
Southeast, pretty much from Virginia down, came to Greenville for the weekend for a giant tournament in the boys and girls divisions. We partnered with Greenville Rec to put in that bid, and we had 40 teams in town for the tournament.” “It’s grown a lot since I moved here in 2008,” Billman says. “It used to exist mostly in the form of informal pickup games. Maybe every other year they’d be able to get a league going with four teams or so. But starting in 2010, we’ve managed to have a league all four seasons every year since then. And yes, we play in the winter. At this point we have leagues of 100-plus people every season.” The third thing I learned is that despite some misconceptions, Ultimate is growing fast. The most common misconception Billman runs into is that he runs disc golf leagues. “They’re two sports played with Frisbees that are being thrown very fast, but Frisbee golf has a wider awareness,” he says. “That’s probably because people see it at different parks; they see people throwing Frisbees at the baskets. Ultimate is a little harder to stumble across. It can be played anywhere, at any time, but it doesn’t have the same immediate recognition as soccer or football. But it’s growing really fast at the college level. I’m not sure if I know a college at this point that doesn’t have an Ultimate team. I think at some point it’ll become an NCAA varsity sport.”
Vincent Harris covers music and sports for The Greenville Journal. Reach him at vharris@ communityjournals.com