With construction of the controversial Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline nearing completion, environmental activists gathered in cities across Florida Friday to call on the banks financing the $3 billion project to pull their support.

  • Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline nearing completion
  • Pipeline goes under springs, could impact aquifer if there's an accident
  • Protesters call on banks to pull support, realize it's a losing proposition

The 515-mile pipeline stretches from Alabama to Central Florida and is designed to transport fracked natural gas from the Northeast to distribution hubs operated by Florida Power & Light and Duke Energy.

The pipeline's route has proven particularly problematic. It runs through the heart of a vast spring shed in north Central Florida, under which lies the Floridan Aquifer, the source of most of the state's drinking water.

"This is an area of coarse limestone, which is very fragile," said Elizabeth Bevington, who joined a protest in Tallahassee. "It's porous. The actual construction of the pipeline is extremely dangerous to that. There has already been one sinkhole that's opened up."

Contamination of the aquifer could be irreversible, federal environmental officials warned in an initial assessment of the project. The warning, however, didn't prevent Gov. Rick Scott and Republican state lawmakers from approving measures to fast-track the pipeline. Scott once owned shares of Spectra Energy, the corporation undertaking the pipeline's construction.

Despite a series of environmental mishaps during the construction process, Sabal Trail Transmission, the joint venture between Spectra, FPL and Duke responsible for the pipeline, argues it has taken sufficient precautions.

"Meticulous planning takes place to ensure our pipelines are routed in an environmentally responsible and economically and technically feasible way," a Sabal Trail video assures the public.

Gas is set to begin flowing through the pipeline by late June, making divestment by the project's financiers unlikely -- a reality the activists had confronted.

"I act only because action is the antidote to despair," Bevington said.