B2B sfyh.comSAN BRUNO, Calif. – The tragic explosion of a gas pipeline in a San Francisco suburb has shed light on a problem usually kept underground: Communities have expanded over pipes built decades earlier when no one lived there.
Utilities have been under pressure for years to better inspect and replace aging gas pipes — many of them laid years before sprawling communities were erected around them — that now are at risk of leaking or erupting.
But the effort has fallen short. Critics say the regulatory system is ripe for problems because the government largely leaves it up to the companies to do inspections, and utilities are reluctant to spend the money necessary to properly fix and replace decrepit pipelines.
“If this was the FAA and air travel we were talking about, I wouldn’t get on a plane,” said Rick Kessler, a former congressional staffer specializing in pipeline safety issues who now works for the Pipeline Safety Trust, an advocacy group based in Bellingham, Wash.
Investigators are still trying to figure out how the pipeline in San Bruno ruptured and ignited a gigantic fireball that torched one home after another in the neighborhood, killing at least four people. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the pipeline’s owner, said Monday it has set aside up to $100 million to help residents recover.
Experts say the California disaster epitomizes the risks that communities face with old gas lines. The pipe was more than 50 years old — right around the life expectancy for steel pipes. It was part of a transmission line that in one section had an “unacceptably high” risk of failure. And it was in a densely populated area.
Congress passed a law in 2002 that required utilities for the first time to inspect pipelines that run through heavily populated areas. In the first five years, more than 3,000 problems were identified — a figure Weimer said underscores the precarious pipeline system.
Even when inspections are done and problems found, Kessler said, there is no requirement for companies to say if or what kind of repairs were made. And Weimer added industry lobbyists have since pushed to relax that provision of the law so inspections could occur once a decade or once every 15 years.
Other critics complain that the pipeline plans are drafted in secret with little opportunity for the public to speak out about the process.A section of pipe connected to the line that exploded was built in 1948, and flagged as a problem by PG&E in a memo. PG&E submitted paperwork to regulators that said the section was within “the top 100 highest risk line sections” in the utility’s service territory, the document shows.
The fact that it’s in an urbanized area that didn’t exist when the pipe was built is emblematic of a bigger problem nationwide, experts say.
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