Pipeline to run beneath Lake Pontchartrain to Miss.

The company planning a $220 million, 141-mile pipeline from Norco to Mississippi hopes to begin work in Lake Pontchartrain—the first stage of the year-long construction process—in the coming weeks, The Times-Picayune. The underground 16-inch pipeline, which will carry gasoline and diesel, will run from the Valero St. Charles Refinery to Collins, Miss., where it will tie into other distribution pipelines. Valero and Kinder Morgan Energy Partners have formed a company called Parkway Pipeline to build and operate the pipeline. Company spokesman Allen Fore says the project has received the needed permits from state agencies but is awaiting a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers before it can begin construction. He says he understood the corps permit could be granted as early as next week. “We’d like to begin by Aug. 13,” Fore says of the construction along the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain. But that date may be optimistic: The corps likely won’t rule on the permit for another four to six weeks, corps spokesman Ken Holder says. The company expects the work in Lake Pontchartrain to take two to three months. The pipeline will emerge from Lake Pontchartrain near Fontainebleau State Park, and head north through St. Tammany and Washington parishes and Walthall, Marion, Jefferson Davis and Covington counties in Mississippi. Parkway Pipeline hopes to have the pipeline operational by September 2013. Read the full story here.