A gateway to the Gulf

One day in February 1991, a man strolling along a bucolic stretch of rural real estate in Alabama heard the call of what he later discovered to be a red-cockaded woodpecker. A rare event, this would ordinarily have been a pleasant surprise. When officials at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington, D.C., got word of the red's siting, they took notice. And when Dan Mitchell and Jamie Craddock at United Gas Pipe Line Co. in Houston found out, they just shook their heads --- again. The red-cockaded woodpecker is but one of the uniquely named, federally protected species native to South Alabama that Mitchell and Craddock had to constantly concern themselves with as they attempted to ensure the environmental and regulatory compliance of United's recently completed 28-mile Gateway gas pipeline near gas-rich Mobile Bay. Until May 1, when United put Gateway into service, it had taken more than six years to plan and construct the most environmentally correct route for the pipeline. This paper discusses the largest portion of Gateway's route which is piney forest or agricultural land with the wetlands area prevalent in the southern end of the route