In April, the Mears Group, Inc. completed a design-build project in Jacksonville, FL to allow a regional energy producer to expand its natural gas pipeline to serve new facilities. To complete the project, Mears drilled a 7,400-foot pilot hole at a depth of 130 feet beneath the St. John's River bottom to install a 16-inch steel pipe. Though just 1.4 miles of the 50-mile pipeline that ends at the Jacksonville Electric Authority's (JEA) Greenland Energy Center, the section under the St. John's River proved the most daunting during the planning stage. "To go from one side of the river to the other proved to be the biggest obstacle," said Mark Haney, director of engineering for TECO Peoples Gas, the company that owns the pipeline. Haney said HDD was virtually the only option to install the pipeline through that area. "Other than HDD, there were no good options." But project officials said the timing of the project was also a major issue.
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