Just what every property owner wants: exhibitionist nitwit trespassers freely accessing their properties via the pipeline easements you seized by eminent domain.
The star of this little film describes it thusly:
“just me riding a honda recon on the millenium pipeline stayed in 2ed gear because i couldent realy shift , i was holding the camra”
Tags: eminent domain, pipelines, trespass
Flushing justice down the pipeline with Wiebo Ludwig’s arrest
Published January 14, 2010 by Jack Locke in Viewpoint Corey Pierce
. . . . . Alberta is not a democratic province. It is a province controlled by international corporations that see profit and extraction of natural resources as their prime object.
In order to accomplish their objective, the industry will use its abundant resources to do things that are not very nice. Companies will send crews of desperate men to attack the land and lay waste on anyone who gets in their way. These crews may wear uniforms and call themselves Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Or the petro-pirates may hire private security forces to instigate dirty tricks to dissipate legitimate opposition to the destruction of Alberta’s air, water and land.
There is a great amount of opposition in Alberta to what the Progressive Conservative dynasty allows. There are voices in every Alberta city that oppose the wanton poisonings of citizens who happen to live downwind or adjacent to an oil or gas well.
But Oilberta is a one-industry town. It is run by the bosses of EnCana, Shell and other giant corporations. They have infiltrated every aspect of Alberta society: hospitals, schools and the government. They have put a clamp on dissension and discussion in a most disgraceful way.
. . . . .
I have lived 15 km downwind of a gas plant. I can tell you stories about the clouds of toxic chemicals that are emitted in the dark of night, while country children sleep in their beds. I can tell you how the Alberta government watchdog agency prohibited me from speaking at a public hearing over whether to allow Shell Canada to expand its Caroline gas plant. I can tell you how the government of Alberta intercepted my private communications for at least four months in 1999.
Nobody likes explosions of pipelines. Nobody likes to have a seismic crew destroy the ageless aquifers that provide drinking water for cattle and country folk. Nobody likes to have a gas well spewing harmful vapours into the air. But people do like automobiles, and they like to receive unnaturally healthy returns on investment. Ah, there’s the rub.
The situation in Alberta will continue for some time to come. So long as birds are found dead on tarsand tailings ponds, so long as drinking water ignites in the rural homes of Albertans, so long as the government permits these atrocities, not much will change.
All that Ludwig wanted was a decent place to live, free from the dangers of modern life. A simple rural existence, subsistence. You’d think it could be found in remote Hythe, Alta. But obviously not.
The idea of sustainable development, respect of citizens and nature and a just society are words not often heard in Alberta’s highest offices. And even if they are heard, they are meaningless in the current political environment.
. . . . .
As a large, cold nation we should develop a national policy that protects the land for future generations, one that protects our natural resources. Depletion of our life’s blood will only ensure a miserable future for our children.
Even if our governments allow for the exhaustion of our non-renewable resources, they must not prohibit legitimate debate on the subject. The word tyranny should have no place in the Canadian lexicon. Yet, the repeated arrest of Ludwig is a sad example of justice being flushed down the pipeline.
Read full piece at Fast Forward Weekly
Tags: Alberta, Canada, pipelines, police
The Associated Press reports:
Flames blazed more than 400 feet high above a natural gas line explosion that rocked Bushland, Texas about 1 a.m. today.
BUSHLAND — A natural gas pipeline exploded in the Texas Panhandle on Thursday, shaking homes, melting window blinds and shooting flames hundreds of feet into the air, authorities said. Three people were injured in the blast, which occurred at 1 a.m. near Amarillo, and they were taken to an area hospital with burns, said Potter County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Roger Short. “My home is about 20 miles something away and I could see the flames from my home,” Short said. “You could hear the roar of the flames 20 miles away.” Firefighters were able to contain most of the flames by 5:30 a.m. though small grass fires continued to burn, Short said. Nearby residents were evacuated, and the pipeline’s gas was shut off, Short said. One house was destroyed, and several others were damaged in Bushland, about 15 miles west of Amarillo, he said. “The heat onto the homes, it did a lot of damage. You could see blinds inside the homes that were melted … it was very hot,” Short said. Bushland Middle School principal, Mark Reasor, said about 60 people who were evacuated took shelter at the school for a few hours before returning home before dawn. Gas service had been cut off to nearby homes and Bushland’s schools, officials said. Messages left with the hospital for conditions of those injured were not immediately returned Thursday. A team of investigators was heading to the pipeline, said Robert Newberry, a spokesman for El Paso Natural Gas. El Paso Natural Gas is a subsidiary of Houston-based El Paso Corporation.
Tags: pipelines
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/article/20091031/NEWS01/91031008
Two teens killed in gas pipeline explosion
Two teenagers died in an early morning explosion at a gas pipeline in Carnes.
Wade White, 18, and Devon Byrd, 16, died at site of the explosion, which happened around 4 a.m. today near White’s home on Phillip White Road.
Byrd was a sophomore at Forrest County Agricultural High School and White had just graduated.
“They were two wonderful kids,” said Wanda White, Wade’s mother. “We just can’t understand what happened. My babies are gone.”
White said she and her husband were awakened by a noise early in the morning. After discovering the boys weren’t in the house, they discovered the fire just a stone’s throw from their home.
Remember this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/world/asia/19mud.html?_r=1&ref=world
Well, never let it be said that the energy industries won’t find a way to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear:
At http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,501061211-1565620,00.html
It’s tough to put a positive spin on the massive eruption of mud that has displaced more than 12,000 people and buried a large swath of eastern Java in roiling, putrid sludge. But PT Lapindo Brantas, the Indonesian mining company widely blamed for releasing the reservoir of pressurized mud following a drilling accident last May, has come up with a novel form of damage control: sponsoring a sinetron, or Indonesian soap opera, on Surabaya TV station JTV. The 13-part series, Gali Lubang, Tutup Lubang (Digging a Hole, Filling a Hole), is a love story set among refugees left homeless by the mud volcano. “We wanted to show a real story about human interest,” says JTV executive producer Awi Setiawan, who adds that Lapindo paid about $3,300 per episode.It may cost Lapindo far more to dig itself out of this particular corporate hole, however. On Nov. 22 at least 11 people were killed by a gas pipeline explosion caused when a dike built to contain the mud flow collapsed—the latest in a string of public debacles for the company, which is part of a conglomerate controlled by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, the country’s influential Welfare Minister. In the past two months, Lapindo’s corporate parent, PT Energi Mega Persada, has unsuccessfully attempted to unload the beleaguered mining business twice: first, to another Bakrie Group subsidiary for the princely sum of $2; then to the British Virgin Islands-based investment firm Freehold Group. The latter deal collapsed last week after a public outcry, with many Indonesians fearing that the sale might prefigure an attempt by a new owner to declare Lapindo bankrupt, potentially leaving the government to pay for a disaster that one environmental group estimates has already caused $3.6 billion in damage.
Thus far, the soap opera hasn’t been enough to dispel that worry, or polish Lapindo’s befouled image. But with the mud still erupting at a rate of 120,000 cu m per day and all efforts to stanch the flow failing, there may be plenty of time for a sequel.
Tags: Brantas, deaths, Indonesia, mud spill, pipelines
Published at the Edmonton Journal – edmontonjournal.com February 12, 2009
Alta. family fights for court costs after battle with oil company
By Jamie Komarnicki, Canwest News Service
CALGARY — Six years ago, the Ball Ranch near the small community of Bragg Creek, Alta., experienced its worst calving season in memory.
“We had weak calves, premature calves, sick calves, dead calves and we lost some cows, as well,” said Susan Graham, who runs the ranch with her husband, Craig, and her mother, Agnes Ball, 72.
“We had never experienced anything like that with our herd — ever.”
The decimated herd was the latest blow in a mounting battle pitting the small ranching family against one of the nation’s largest corporations.
It’s a fight some legal experts describe as the oil-and-gas industry playing “hardball.”
Recently, a Calgary judge ruled in the ranchers’ favour.
A Court of Queen’s Bench justice found in December that an Imperial Oil pipeline leak exposed a portion of the family’s cattle to hydrocarbon contamination.
The two parties were in court Thursday to argue over costs.
An Imperial Oil spokesman declined to comment on the case but said the company is proud of its relationship with local communities.
“We take great pride in our environmental record, particularly in maintaining positive relationships with our neighbours, which makes this case particularly troubling,” Pius Rolheiser said.
Nigel Bankes, chairman of natural resources law at the University of Calgary, suggested the judge’s ruling indicates the case could have been settled out of court “without putting the family to the cost, expense and emotions associated with proving a case in court.
“What that suggests is oil and gas companies will play hardball with landowners,” Bankes said.
The dispute began in the summer of 2002, when Agnes Ball returned from a weekend vacation to find a massive pit dug near a sour gas pipeline running through land where some of her cattle grazed. The leased land has been in the family since the 1940s, she said.
She said an Imperial employee later told her it was doing some work on a sour gas pipeline.
Cattle were grazing nearby, she said.
“I was furious,” Ball said Thursday.
The family’s concerns over contamination mounted.
When the calving season proved disastrous, they decided to take further action.
After repeatedly tangling with the company, Ball launched a lawsuit against Imperial Oil in 2004.
Family members insist that if they had known about the pipeline work and contaminated soil and water, they would have moved the cattle — and avoided the crushing calving season and damage to their herd that followed.
In December, the judge awarded the family nearly $70,000 in damages.
Their lawyer argued Thursday in court that the ranchers deserved as much as $150,000 for legal costs.
“If the David is ever intended or able to take on the Goliath, so to speak, costs do need to be acknowledged at the outcome of this decision,” said Spencer Bates outside of court.
Calgary Herald
Tags: dead livestock, livestock, pipelines
From a pipeline safety activist:
Some pipeline basics:
http://www.pstrust.org/pipeinfo/beginners.htm
http://www.ferc.gov/industries/gas/indus-act/blank-cert/blanketcert.pdfGetting involved before the pipeline is built:
http://www.pstrust.org/pipeinfo/involvement.htmA good summary of what you should do after the pipeline is built:
http://www.pstrust.org/pipeinfo/landowners.htmNote links at the bottom of that page, such as:
http://www.ownerscounsel.com/Page for local governments:
http://www.pstrust.org/pipeinfo/localgov.htmIt’s virtually impossible to stop a pipeline from being built once they claim eminent domain. That’s gone all the way to the US Supreme Court for a non pipeline eminent domain issue, and was upheld. Yes, private companies can take your land for their gain.
You also need to know some details about the pipeline:
*If it’s a gas gathering (production) pipeline, then it’s regulated by an agency in your state.
*If it’s a gas gathering pipeline, then how will the pipeline company deal with the steel corrosive compounds in the raw gas that can corrode the pipeline quickly if not controlled? Note that raw gas is unodorized, so finding a leak in a raw gas pipeline by smell is not recommended.
*How much land will need to be cleared of all vegetation before the pipeline is built?
*Who is responsible for restoring the land after the pipeline is built, and how will that be done?
*How much land will need to be kept clear of trees, shrubs, out buildings, above ground pools, etc. after the pipeline is built? Some people got a real shock when pipelines near them decided to start clearing their pipeline Right of Ways (ROW) as wide as the easement deed allowed. Or, they find restrictions on what they can plant on & near the pipeline.
Tags: eminent domain, pipelines
"DISH is located just off FM 156, a few miles west of I-35 and Denton. It's pretty much in the middle of nowhere, which, from the drillers' point of view, made it the perfect place for gathering, compressing, and transmitting natural gas to and from all directions." - Fort Worth Weekly, 10/14/09
And what has the natural gas industry done to DISH, Texas, that it will also do here? Here’s an excerpt from an October 14 article:
The wind blows through pretty freely now, however, since most of the trees have recently died.
“After the explosion and what happened to my horses, all my boarders took their horses out of there,” said Burgess, now 56. “Who could blame them? This was going to be my retirement, but now it’s valueless.”
The words “valueless” and “worthless” come up a lot in conversation with people from DISH.
Read the entire article:
More from DISH’s mayor:
The news that I continually get makes this nightmare worse and worse. I have yet another twenty something young lady who has undiagnosed neurological problems that started when she moved here. She has been shipped out of state for testing on a number of occasions, and they have been unable to diagnose the problems she is having. I am having difficult time in know what the next move should be. I wonder if there is a medical doctor out there who may come to help us here? Maybe there would be someone who could perform toxicology tests on the citizens. Please give me any input you may have, and if you know of anyone who may be willing to help, please let us know. Maybe you could post something on your websites or blogs soliciting help. Together I know you reach thousands of people. Thanks.
Calvin Tillman
Mayor, DISH, TX
(940) 453-3640
Tags: air emissions, air pollution, deaths, DISH, livestock, pipelines, TX
http://www.weny.com/News-Local.asp?ARTICLE3864=9148471
| Corning Gas Pipeline Leaking for 2 Years | |
| Patrick Card | |
 |
|
| October 13, 2009
Caton, NY — A Caton man says a gas pipeline running through his property has been leaking for almost two years. Gary Jellifs told WENY-TV News that the pipe was fixed once but started leaking again just a few months later. Now he says Corning Gas Company is unwilling to fix the pipe because the company has bigger problems to deal with. “You guys are our last option. We called everybody. We went through the proper channels. We called the gas company. We called the fire department. We called the state organizations and you guys are our last chance,” Jellifs said. “People need to know these gas lines are dangerous. Somebody needs to do something,” he added. The pipe can be heard bubbling underneath the surface and natural gas is visibly escaping from the hole in the ground. Corning Gas Vice President of Operations Matt Cook admitted it has known about the leak for years and have largely ignored it because of more pressing concerns. But he also claimed they are among the best in New York State at replacing old pipeline. “We’re replacing pipes with new more modern material in order to prevent leaks from occuring and to eliminate any existing leaks that are out there.”  |
|
A giant ball of fire covers most of 4th Street near the intersection of Ames Boulevard on Saturday.
About 40 apartments at the St. Bakhita complex were evacuated as a precautionary measure after a fire in a gas pipeline in the 4000 block of Fourth Street at Ames Boulevard, authorities said. The $22 million apartment complex opened in April.
No one was injured in the incident that was reported around 10:25 a.m. Chief Rickie Eslick of the Marrero-Ragusa Volunteer Fire Department said that residents were allowed to return aroiund 12:30 p.m.
Eslick said the cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Atmos Energy officials said they received a report shortly after 10:30 a.m. of a fire near an 18-inch main gas line that runs long Fourth Street. Company officials said they believe that a gas leak from the pipe was ignited by overhanging Entergy powerlines, causing the explosion and fire.
Entergy officials could not be reached for comment.
Complete story at: http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/post_41.html
.
Tags: explosion, fire, Louisiana, pipelines
Guest post from Larry from Fremont, NY:
Typical truck traffic in front of our house. This kind of traffic was almost non-stop, often 24 hours/day, for seven to eight months. They'd shine their bright lights into our bedroom at 3:00 am, blast horns, rev their engines, and shout and curse at all hours. There were typically four or five trucks waiting in a line to go up and down the neighbor's driveway, with their diesel engines going non-stop.
“It’s not just the drilling. We live next to the Delaware River in Fremont, NY, and unfortunately, our neighbor, a rare weekend visitor from the city, took the money from the Millennium Pipeline and allowed them access to her property. It was supposed to be for 2-3 months. Two years later and they’ve finally left – for good we hope – but not before they ruined two years of our lives with their noise, heavy machinery, blasting, not to mention urinating on our property, dumping trash, intentionally sweeping tons of dirt on our property while laughing at us, intentionally blocking our driveway, spitting, cursing, and much more abuse.
Pipeliner urinating across the street next to a no trespassing sign. This picture was taken by my wife while I was at work!
“These people they bring in to work on these projects are disgusting. They bring them in by the busloads – probably migrant workers who have no respect for our lands. It’s going to cost us thousands to clean the dirt off our house and outbuildings and repaint them, plus cleaning up our property in general. But the part-time neighbor from the big city gets tens of thousands of dollars and doesn’t have to live with it. She’s on the hill, so all the filth blew down to our property.
Blocked driveway. This was a typical day with all kinds of heavy machinery blocking our driveway for hours at a time, every day, for month after month.
“The DEC sued Millenium Pipeline for $200,000. The violations included reports of neighbors’ dogs coming back from the woods covered in human feces, not providing Port-o-johns – obviously, and general damage to the environment such as causing landslides, polluting protected streams, etc. The potential contamination of the woods behind our house is going to prevent us from enjoying those woods for years.
“We have no doubt that the same type of people will be brought in to work on the gas wells. People around here are excited because they think this will bring in jobs and money. But the jobs are going to these outsiders, and the gas is going back to the big city, not to us. They think they’ll get royalties on these wells, but we’re told the companies often drill the wells and then cap them, so the royalties aren’t realized for years. However, now these companies have right-of-way access to their land forever.
Another blocked driveway, but this one showing the tar and macadam they left in our driveway for months. When we finally shoveled it out, it was 7" thick in places, not including the large chunks. This is clearly mid-winter; they originally promised us they'd be out of there by August.
“We’ve been told by authorities that a lot of the people leasing their land to these companies are these “weekend visitors from the city”, who tell them to go ahead and drill all they want, just don’t do it on the weekends when they’re here. So, these weekenders get all the cash, and we get all the trash.
Pipeline street sweeper sweeping up plumes of dirt on the hot, dry road. Sweeping the dirt is useless unless the road is wet. For months we begged and pleaded with the guy in charge of the pipeline job for water trucks to moisten the road. That was all we asked for; just wet the road and keep the dirt down. They rarely came, and when they did they sometimes left without watering. The only purpose to sweeping the dirt on the dry road in front of our house was to taunt us. At one point this sweeper went up and down in front of our house six times with his sweeper angled at our property each time, blowing huge plumes of dirt over our property. On the sixth run he stopped in front of our mailbox and laughed at us.
“We feel really bad for all those people who are suffering from these pipelines and wells. The wells don’t affect us directly because we’re in an area that is not economically feasible to drill in, and we have a shallow well because our aquifer comes from the mountain behind us. We can recover from the damage Millennium Pipeline has done to us in two to three years, but those damaged by these wells may never recover. So, we may be protected – for now – at least from the drilling. But as I keep telling my wife and others, if we don’t speak out on behalf of those who are suffering now, then who’s going to speak out on our behalf when our time comes?”
Dirt and dust blowing over our property. This went on every day for a year, every time a vehicle went up or down the road.
Tags: landowners, Millenium, pipelines
Guest post by MB regarding a Town of Lebanon meeting at which citizens were vocal in their opposition to road bore permits for Nornew pipelines:
————————————————————-
This is yet another instance of concerned citizens turning out to
publicly state their objections once they know the specifics of what
is proposed for their own neighborhood. While I’m sure that some of
the people who were yelling about the gathering line are
altruistically concerned about a lot more than just their own
neighborhood, I think we have to recognize that it is human nature to
be somewhat worried about a dragon that is ten miles away, but to be
in mortal terror of a dragon that is ten feet away. This is why the
Forces Of Evil (i.e. the gas industry and its minions) have enacted
laws that allow huge, industrial, horizontal well pads to be
constructed in residential areas without prior notice or public
hearings: the FOEs know full well that, given the opportunity, a lot
of people would object to having a gas well sited in their
neighborhood, so the FOEs have deprived the people of their
opportunity to object.
Someone who broke into my house and stole a pad of notepaper could be
prosecuted, but the gas industry can come into my neighborhood without
my consent, devalue my home, steal my clean water and my clean air,
destroy my sense of well-being, and ruin my health, and I would have
little or no legal recourse. This is legalized lawlessness. It is
legalized chaos. You cannot have a stable, healthy, productive,
thriving community if its citizens must live in the midst of
lawlessness and chaos: supposedly, we figured this out a long time
ago–it’s one of the major reasons for having laws in the first
place.
A compilation of gas leases in Tompkins County (see http://www.tcgasmap.org)
has revealed that the decision to completely alter the nature of the
county and endanger everyone’s health has been made by just 6% of the
adult, non-student population of the county. Needless to say, the
personal and financial costs of trying to repair the damage to the
environment, pay the health care bills, etc. will NOT be borne by just
6% of the county. This gas nightmare is frightening not just because
of the dangers of chemicals and well fires and air pollution: it is
also frightening because of its profoundly undemocratic nature. There
is a radical revolution in progress here and we are not the radicals.
——————————————————————–
In response to:
“Town of Lebanon requests delay in proposed 16 inch steel gas pipeline and public statement hearing – Comments on PSC Case No. 09-T-0499Those who are discouraged by the response of the general public and local governments to our concerns should have been at this meeting. People were yelling. When Town Supervisor Goldstein asked at the end of the meeting for a show of hands from the attending Town of Lebanon residents, as to whether the town should issue the road bore permits tonight as requested by Nornew, no one was so inclined. Nothing like a couple of gas well fires and obviously-inadequate containment/run-off mitigations to focus people’s minds.”
How long can you live with a problem while you struggle to enforce the terms of your “good” lease? Yup, that one, the one with all the protections – protections that are only as good as your ability (read money) to enforce them.
The company gets to deduct its “production” (imagine what that term could encompass) and transportation costs from your royalty payments. You don’t get to recoup your legal costs on top of your royalties.
What will you have left when the fight’s over?
Tags: ExxonMobil, leak, lease, pipelines, Rancho Los Malulos
NewsAdvance.com, Lynchburg, VA reports:
Published: September 12, 2009
APPOMATTOX — Deputy John Mattox still patrols the stretch of Virginia 26 that’s just north of town.
He passes the spot daily — right there, at the crest of the hill — where a year ago he stopped, stepped out of his cruiser and snapped a photo.
He knew what he had to do early that Sunday morning, and he thought it would kill him. The photo, he reasoned, would help investigators piece together how he died.
As he felt the air sucking away from him and into an expanding fireball just down the hill, Mattox tucked the camera under the driver’s seat. Then he ran toward the inferno fueled by a ruptured natural gas line, going door to door to move residents from their homes to safety.
A year later, new grass and weeds cover the scorched earth. The wreckage of two homes blown apart in the explosion is gone. Except for melted siding on a few homes up the road and some boarded-up windows, there is little physical evidence of the blast that rocked this tight-knit community on Sept. 14, 2008.
Even Mattox’s photo is gone. He deleted it from his camera a few months later.Details of that day, though, are seared in his memory. It is the same for many Appomattox residents who lived through the crisis — similar to the way that history-changing events are etched in the minds of those who experienced them, like President John F. Kennedy’s assassination or the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Greg Heath still remembers his panicked realization that morning that the pipeline he helped maintain had ruptured.
The Williams Gas Company employee was awake in his bed when the phone rang. As he answered the call, his wife went to the window. She yelled for him to come look.
“I looked at the fireball and I knew we started it,” he said. “The only thing that can burn like that is a ruptured pipeline. I thought, `Good God, we’ve set the world on fire.”
Heath has worked for Williams for 24 years and is trained in what to do in an emergency. He hopped into his truck and drove to the compressor station, a tenth of a mile from his home. The control panel there showed dangerously low pressure in one of the lines. He pushed a button to shut down the pumps that moved gas through the lines.
As he tried to report the rupture to the company’s control office, other local Williams employees called from valve locations along the pipeline demanding to know which line to shut down completely. They didn’t need to be called. They had seen, and heard, the rupture.
Heath didn’t go out to the site of the blast until four days later.
“I was devastated,” he said. “Everything was just blackened and awful. It was like a piece of hell.” Heath still doesn’t like to ride past the site, about three miles from his home, even though most evidence of the damage has been erased.
“It was hard for me to see what we had done,” he said. “Those people lost everything they own. … I felt like we did a good job of taking care of what needed to be done.”
Mattox, the deputy, was called a hero for his actions getting residents to safety. He knows it is a miracle, really, that no one died in the blast.
“This caught me off guard by its magnitude,” he said recently. “I will always remember the size of that fireball. That fireball was massive. … I believed that it would spread to adjacent residences.”
Just before Mattox took the photograph, he met Junior and Dorothy Bryant on the road as they fled from the cloud of dust and the rocks that punctured their roof and landed in their living room.
A year later, Bryant’s home — located a few hundred yards from the blast site — sits empty with a for sale sign in the front yard. Sometimes, he drives to his home of six years and sits in the driveway just to think. The Bryants never really returned to that house except to gather their belongings.
The couple lived with family members for a few months before settling with Williams. The company bought their old house and their new one, just down the street from the company’s compressor station. Some people joke about their new address, but Dorothy loves the house, Junior Bryant said.
“People look at us like, `Didn’t you get enough?’” he said. “I don’t find no fear in it. This thing was not supposed to happen.”
He’s hiked and hunted along those pipelines for most of his life. The Bryants looked at other places after the blast, but fell in love with the spacious house on Pumping Station Road.
It took a while, though, for Junior and Dorothy to be comfortable in their new home. Sounds of maintenance on the compressor station startled them. And once in a restaurant when a balloon popped, Junior almost hit the bottom of the table.
He thanks God that he and his wife are still alive.
“If it had been at night, I’m not sure we would have gotten out,” Bryant said. “If we hadn’t gotten out before the fireball, we wouldn’t have made it.”
He remembers sitting in the emergency shelter eating dinner with Dorothy that night a year ago.
“I would have thought it would never happen to me, where we live,” Bryant said. “We were sitting there eating dinner and thinking, `Wow, this is real.’ One morning things are normal and the next, the world’s upside down.”
. . . . .
The rupture brought the pipeline to the attention of many in Appomattox who had previously ignored it.
“People in the county didn’t know the pipeline was near their houses,” said Timmy Garrett, Appomattox’s fire chief. “We had people who bought their houses, and had no idea that they were 25 feet from a gas line.”
Now, strange or loud noises around the pipeline and compressor station prompt calls to emergency dispatch, said Bobby Wingfield, the county’s emergency services director.
“With the presence of the gas pipeline, any abnormality, any suspicious activity draws attention,” he said. “People, not just pipeline people, are more aware of it.
“It will take a while for people, when they hear a loud sound, to think it’s something other than the pipeline.”
Tags: explosion, pipelines, VA, Virginia
KRGV.com reports, 9/13/09
RIO GRANDE CITY – The sky in Rio Grande City was lit up Saturday night by a huge fireball. It was the result of a natural gas pipeline explosion.
. . . . .
Firefighters say it was a challenging blaze for them because they couldn’t get to it to tackle it. Fire crews waited for the gas company to turn off the gas to that location first and waited for the fire to subside a bit before battling it. The fire burned for at least two hours and then dwindled on its own.
Fire crews are meeting with the pipeline company tomorrow morning to find out what caused the explosion. They say one possibility is that the lines could be old. The lines will stay turned off for now.
Complete story at:
http://www.krgv.com/news/local/story/Gas-Pipeline-Explodes-in-Rio-Grande-City/9ZYzNbqk-kSpqAK11wFqYg.cspx
Tags: explosion, leaks, pipelines
KRGV.com in Texas, 11/26/08:
Reported by: Will Ripley
MCALLEN – NEWSCHANNEL 5 uncovered the potential danger caused by natural gas pipelines under Valley neighborhoods.
Six weeks ago, a natural gas pipeline exploded in McCook. The ball of fire was 400 feet high and over 1,500 degrees. The flames melted everything around them, including the asphalt on the road.
NEWSCHANNEL 5 spent the past six weeks traveling across Texas, digging up documents, and tracing a trail of pipelines. We found the pipelines weaving under your neighborhoods, your homes, and your schools.
We also learned natural gas is being blamed for a series of house explosions in north Texas.
“We have a very volatile situation,” says Jay Marcom. The north Texas farmer was in Austin, testifying to the Railroad Commission about the danger of natural gas pipelines. He says worn-out pipelines are leaking natural gas, polluting his land, and putting lives at risk.
“They’re just sitting out there waiting and rusting, waiting to explode,” Marcom says.
He agreed to come to the Valley with special equipment used to detect natural gas leaks. It didn’t take long before we found one. It was less than three miles from the McCook explosion site.
“You can smell the natural gas in this area,” commented Marcom.
NEWSCHANNEL 5 learned there are literally hundreds of miles of natural gas pipelines, running under thousands of Hidalgo County homes. This includes houses in McAllen, Mission, Edinburg, and Pharr. In fact, Hidalgo County has more pipelines than all the other Valley counties put together.
Railroad Commission documents show some of these lines are over five decades old. Back then, the pipelines were surrounded by empty fields.
Now, new homes and businesses are going up in the area. We’re told the land is too valuable not to develop.
“You’re moving out into the oil field and you’re exposing yourself to danger when you do that,” says Marcom.
City and pipeline operators work together to keep you as safe as possible. Companies try to keep a 50-foot buffer zone around the lines. But NEWSCHANNEL 5 found out that doesn’t always happen.
We saw one pipeline running directly underneath homes. Another pipeline runs right under McAllen Memorial High School.
Gas companies insist it is safe to build over pipelines, as long as the public knows they’re there.
. . . . .
NEWSCHANNEL 5 spent two days searching for pipelines. Most of the sites looked well maintained. All of them were fenced off, keeping us and our testing equipment out.
We tried talking to the HESCO Gathering Company, which owns the pipeline that blew up in McCook. They also own gas lines that run right under Valley neighborhoods. They turned us down for an on-camera interview.
But they did agree to answer some of our questions by phone and email.
HESCO says they’re still waiting on lab reports to confirm the official cause of the McCook explosion. But they tell NEWSCHANNEL 5 it was likely a “corrosion issue.”
We asked if HESCO’s other gas lines are corroding too. They responded, “We do significant testing on our pipelines.”
But they couldn’t give us an exact date. They did say, “We are constantly inspecting and treating our pipelines.”
More than a dozen companies operate natural gas lines in the Valley. Only one company, Shell, agreed to an interview. They have three full time inspectors in the Valley. They check 600 miles of pipelines, preventing problems before they happen.
Shell spokesperson James Blanton says, “The safety of the public and the environment is of the utmost importance to us.”
We asked him if the accident in McCook could happen in McAllen.
“Yes, hypothetically, yeah it could happen,” says Blanton, “But I’m very confident it will not be a Shell line.”
The Texas Railroad Commission also has four inspectors covering more than a thousand miles of pipelines in the Valley. Their job is to make sure those pipelines are well-maintained.
But even the state admits whenever you mix pipelines and people problems are bound to happen. According to the Railroad Commission, 200 such accidents happen a week in Texas. That’s more than 28 accidents a day.
Most accidents happen when construction workers dig and hit a gas line.
Ramona Nye of the Texas Railroad Commission explains, “This is the number one cause of accidents in the state. We are working hard to reduce those accidents.”
The Railroad Commission will soon begin fining people who dig into pipelines, without calling to find out where they are.
But Marcom says with so many gas lines in such a populated area, it’s only a matter of time before the next big accident.
“You’ve got the same ticking time bomb out in the country, in McAllen, in the Valley, with these unregulated gas gathering lines that are just waiting to explode,” he says.
We should point out the local government makes millions of dollars in tax revenue from these gas gathering lines.
The official report on the McCook explosion is due out in two weeks. As soon as we get that information from the company that owns the line, we’ll share it with you.
If you’re buying a home, it’s up to you to look around and see if there are any gas pipelines in the area. If you live near a natural gas line, the Texas Railroad Commission says you should always call before you dig. You can dial 811 or call 800-545-6005.
If you see or smell gas, get away from the area immediately and don’t use your cell phone because it could spark an explosion. Once you’re in a safe area, call police to report a possible gas leak.
Complete story at:
http://www.krgv.com/content/news/investigations/story/Dangers-of-Gas-Pipelines-Under-Neighborhoods/IFdmgVrTAEqwnRvsStHctw.cspx
Tags: corrosion, explosion, leaks, pipelines
From a homeowner in Missouri:
“We do not like being told that we have the responsibility of keeping these pipelines safe. That we can not do what we want in our own back yards, that we are the eyes and ears of the operators. Yet like it or not we are. And many people have no idea what to do with that responsibility.
“I get calls from people who smell or see something and don’t know what to do about it…The people who call 911 do the right thing but some are afraid to call 911. Some call our local gas utility company, they check their lines but the service guys that come out generally have no idea that these pipelines are out here.”
Tags: homeowner, natural gas, pipelines
0