Natural gas began flowing to the Bay Area through the Coos County pipeline as of Thursday. Gas was turned on in the Roseburg area and was expected to take five to six hours to reach the coast. These pipes are located on Coos Bay-North Bend Water Board property at the Northwest Natural Gas substation on Ocean Boulevard. World Photo by Madeline Steege

It's been a long time coming, but natural gas is finally flowing through the 60-mile long pipeline from Roseburg to Coos Bay.

"I'm excited," said NW Natural's District Manager Cal Grimmer, as he stood 10 feet away from where the mainline of the gas dead-ends in Coos Bay.

After weeks of testing, NW Natural engineers were busy monitoring the first push of pure natural gas Thursday morning. Monitors were used by engineers at five locations along the route to ensure everything was going according to plan.

"Everything is going well," said Cliff Coulter, a transmission line supervisor for NW Natural at mid-morning on Thursday.

The gas's journey had begun about 90 minutes earlier in Roseburg and was expected to reach Coos Bay by early afternoon at NW Natural's gate station near the intersection of Ocean Boulevard and Commercial Avenue, Grimmer said.

"If these guys are happy, then I am happy," Grimmer said.

The natural gas that will feed Coos County residences and businesses comes from gas beds located in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, and other veins found in the Rocky Mountains of the United States. The gas is piped to NW Natural storage wells in Mist, down along Interstate 5 by Williams Interstate Pipeline and into the Coos County pipeline, Grimmer said.

NW Natural has 30 customers in Coos Bay already using compressed gas service. If all goes well, those customers will be converted to natural gas from the pipeline by next week, Grimmer said.

An additional 200 to 300 customers - including 45 area businesses - are on a waiting list to make the switch from propane gas, oil, electric and wood energy sources to natural gas, which powers clothes dryers, stoves, furnaces, water heaters and barbecues, among other items, Grimmer said.

For now, the gas will serve Coos Bay and North Bend, but by Feb. 1, lateral lines will be completed to Coquille and Myrtle Point.

Extending natural gas to Bandon is contingent, in part, on the outcome of a lawsuit against MasTec Inc., the first construction company hired by the county, said Coos County Commissioner Nikki Whitty.

Whitty characterized the life of the project that began in June of 2003 as a "nightmare."

By September of that year, both MasTec and Coos County were fined by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality for environmental damages sustained while the pipeline was being built.

The county agreed to pay a $495,000 settlement in November 2004 for violations of the federal Clean Water Act. The money will fund construction of a series of fish-passage restoration projects along the pipeline route and restoration in other impacted areas.

The county contended the violations were the result of unauthorized activities by MasTec and is suing the company for $10 million. The construction company launched a $10 million lawsuit of its own against Coos County in February, charging the county had not paid the company for work completed through Dec. 15, 2003. The county maintained it would not pay MasTec until the construction company made good on multiple noncompliance orders from the state and federal agencies, and then terminated its contract with MasTec in April 2004.

Many business leaders hope the presence of natural gas will draw more industries to the area, Grimmer said. But on Thursday, he added, there were no new contracts yet waiting in the wings.

It has been reported that Southport Forest Products' construction of a new sawmill on the North Spit was based, in part, on the arrival of the natural gas pipeline.

"It was one of the reasons, but not the main reason," said Sue Burns, a controller for Southport, adding that Southport would have built the sawmill there even if the pipeline had not been constructed.

Ron Opitz, the executive director of the South Coast Development Council, said the pipeline was the primary reason the SCDC and its partners were able to interest a liquefied natural gas company in making plans for a $150 million capital investment out on the North Spit.

"That gave the LNG project the impetus to move forward," Opitz said.

He would not disclose the names of any new companies that have shown interest in building here, citing confidentiality agreements, but he did say there are several companies that have called the SCDC.

"I can say that there is a good deal of interest and a lot of it is because we have another energy source here," Opitz said. "Natural gas is another key component to a complete infrastructure system."

While all of the pipeline's construction costs are not yet known, Whitty said, the county has spent $38 million on the project through the end of December. The original total estimated cost of the project was about $43 million. That figure likely would be surpassed, in part because of the delays, repairs and restoration efforts.

"We are not going to make that. No way," Whitty said. "But we should not go over the $51 (million) either."

While the delivery of gas should be a day to celebrate, Whitty said she had mixed emotions Thursday.

"It's a huge relief as far as the construction goes," the commissioner said, "but we still have a lot of cleanup to do. I would like to be able to say I could breathe a huge sigh of relief and go on with other things. But we are not going to be going onto other things for a while."