America's natural-gas boom is driving the construction of thousands of miles of new pipelines, many of them crisscrossing heavily populated or environmentally sensitive areas... The construction of highly pressurized lines snaking under farms and past residential areas is raising fears about safety and environmental impacts... The pipeline boom is being driven by the need to distribute growing natural-gas production to markets across the nation... [Fort Worth, Texas] antidrilling activist Don Young said..."[Local residents are] realizing I'm not a radical. What's radical is putting pipelines next to elementary schools and front yards"... [Aubrey McClendon, chief executive of natural-gas giant Chesapeake Energy Corp.]...said such fears are exaggerated... Accidents do happen. In August 2000, a natural-gas pipeline ruptured near Carlsbad, N.M., sending a fireball hundreds of feet into the air, killing 12 campers. The Department of Transportation, which oversees pipeline safety, recorded two deaths, seven injuries and $39 million worth of property damage from onshore transmission pipelines last year... "The safety record of the gas-transmission industry is strong and getting better," said Phillip Wright, chairman of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America and president of Williams Gas Pipeline Co. [part of Williams Companies] Critics also raise environmental concerns, about everything from the potential for groundwater contamination to disruption of plant and animal life on the surface.