PG&E TO REPLACE MORE THAN 1,200 MILES OF FAULTY GAS PIPING ACROSS CALIFORNIA
This story by Paul Rogers was published Oct. 14, 2011 by the Bay Area News Group.
Facing pressure after a leaky plastic gas pipe sparked a fire at a Cupertino condominium complex, PG&E has decided to replace all 1,231 miles of the same type of aging and notoriously faulty pipeline spread across the state.
The massive project will start next month in Cupertino and Roseville — where the pipe has been involved in recent accidents — and in St. Helena. Communities across Northern California and in every Bay Area county will be dug up while the job, expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, is completed over the coming years.
Unlike the 30-inch steel transmission gas line that ruptured last year, killing eight people in San Bruno, the 2-inch wide plastic pipe that failed in Cupertino six weeks ago is part of PG&E’s network of 42,000 miles of distribution lines that deliver gas directly to businesses and homes.
Batches of that plastic pipe, manufactured by DuPont before 1973 under the name Aldyl-A, have shown a history of cracking, prompting numerous federal safety advisories dating to 1998.
“This is the oldest vintage. We know it is predisposed to cracking,” Jane Yura, PG&E’s vice president of standards and policies for gas operations, said in an interview Thursday. “We are looking at what we need to do to remove the risks and run a safe system.”
Replacing all 1,231 miles of PG&E’s pre-1973 Aldyl-A pipe will take more than three years, Yura said. She said PG&E will go to the California Public Utilities Commission, probably next year, to ask for a rate increase to cover the cost, which she said the company had not finished estimating yet.
The company also is building computerized maps to digitize 15,000 paper maps showing where the pipe is located statewide. It is building a database to help analyze leaks and find which sections should be replaced first, Yura added. And it will replace some of the 6,676 miles of Aldyl-A pipe built after 1973 in areas with higher-than-normal leak histories, she said, even though that vintage of pipe has not been the subject of federal advisories.
No federal or state law requires PG&E to dig up all of its Aldyl-A pipe. But problems across the country with it have resulted in numerous lawsuits and multimillion-dollar settlements, dating back decades.
“They know they have 1,200 miles of old, worn out, defective pipe,” said Jim Findley, of San Rafael, a PG&E gas measurement and control mechanic for 38 years who has raised safety issues about Aldyl-A pipe at PG&E shareholder meetings.
“Sooner or later, this is going to pop up on some attorney’s or law firm’s screens, and they are going to be going after PG&E for not doing due diligence.”
In 2008, a section of an Odessa, Wash., natural gas pipeline made of Aldyl-A pipe exploded, causing a fire that injured two people and destroyed buildings. The faulty pipes were also blamed for a 2003 explosion that killed a Missouri fairgrounds employee. And in 2000, Arizona’s Tucson Gas & Electric reached a $25 million settlement, after problems occurred with its Aldyl-A plastic gas pipeline, installed in the 1960s and 1970s.
Locally, PG&E found numerous leaks in pipes at the Northpoint condominium complex in Cupertino after an Aug. 31 fire gutted a woman’s home only 15 minutes after she had left.
Then, on Sept. 27, another Aldyl-A distribution line failed under a Roseville intersection, sending flames shooting into the air for seven hours.
Findley called PG&E’s new strategy “a positive step” and said it would make PG&E one of the only major utilities in the nation to remove all of its pre-1973 Aldyl-A pipe.
“This will take at least 10 years to get that much pipe out of the ground. And hundreds of millions of dollars,” Findley said. “I don’t see any way it will be less than $1 billion. There are sidewalks and roads, storm drains, things like that, and you have to work around all of it. Because PG&E hadn’t been taking care of business, now they are behind the eight ball.”
In 1998, after a similar type of plastic pipe cracked in Waterloo, Iowa, causing an explosion that destroyed a bar and killed six people, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended utilities and state regulators better monitor plastic piping from that era and replace it when they find it to be a risk.
In 2002, and again in 2007, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issued advisory bulletins warning of “premature brittle-like cracking” in Aldyl-A pipes made before 1973 and urging utilities to review records and more frequently survey the lines for leaks. But under pressure from industry, neither the federal government nor the California Public Utilities Commission has ever required it all to be dug up and replaced.
Attempting to turn the page after last year’s San Bruno disaster, PG&E hired a new CEO, Anthony Earley, a former Naval officer who ran a Detroit utility, DTE Energy, and brought in a new executive vice president in charge of gas operations, Nick Stavropoulos, who overhauled gas line safety at utilities in New York and New England. In his prior job, Stavropoulos replaced Aldyl-A piping across New Hampshire.
“This is good news. I’m happy that they are planning to replace it,” said Assemblyman Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, of PG&E’s new plans. “I’m troubled by the fact that it took the recent tragedies for them to realize that this needs to be replaced. But I’m happy that they are doing it.”
Earlier Thursday, Hill and Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Mountain View, announced plans to introduce legislation next year requiring the Public Utilities Commission to force PG&E and other utilities to adopt recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board for improving natural gas pipeline safety.
Hill said he isn’t sure how much ratepayers should pay for PG&E’s work to replace its oldest Aldyl-A lines.
“I question whether the ratepayers should be held responsible,” Hill said. “We paid for that pipe once. I don’t know what the life expectancy of that pipe was. But if it was more than 30 years, at least some of the cost should be the manufacturer’s or PG&E’s responsibility.”