Grijalva seeks US review of pipeline service roads through wildlife refuge

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat, has asked the U.S. Department of the Interior to intervene in a controversial pipeline project that would carry natural gas from Tucson to Sasabe and into Mexico. Grijalva sent a letter to the secretary of the interior Monday asking the department to challenge findings from a draft report released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding the use of access roads in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge for the Kinder Morgan Sierrita Pipeline project. In the report, known as a draft compatibility determination, Fish and Wildlife evaluated a proposal from Kinder Morgan to use 12 miles of roads in the refuge area during pipeline construction and determined it was permissible. Grijalva questioned why the agency would let Kinder Morgan use roads in the refuge after it refused to let the company build its pipeline through the refuge in an existing corridor near Arizona 286. “Not only would these roads be used for construction and access by heavy equipment and trucks, these roads would serve as permanent access for maintenance and repairs of the pipeline,” Grijalva said in the letter. “This is an inexplicable determination and totally inconsistent with their previous determination of incapability of siting the pipeline along the already disturbed highway corridor.”...more