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SALT LAKE CITY — Aging pipelines that have led to serious injury or death and environmental contamination are the target of a new national initiative that seeks to accelerate repairs and strengthen regulatory oversight.
The initiative was announced Monday by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in Allentown, Pa., the site of a natural gas pipeline failure that killed five people and damaged multiple structures in February.
It comes, too, after Salt Lake City suffered twin oil spills in 2010 from an aging pipeline operated by Chevron between Rangely, Colo., and its Salt Lake refinery on Beck Street.
People deserve to know that they can turn on the lights, the heat, or the stove without endangering their families and neighbors.
–U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood
Remediation continues to this day after a June spill dumped hundreds of barrels of oil into Red Butte Creek, despoiling the riparian waterway and sending the blackened gunk to the lake at Liberty Park, which remains closed.
An investigation by the national transportation department's Office of Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration found that a fierce storm blew a tree into an overhead power line near Red Butte Gardens causing an electrical arc that burned a hole the size of a quarter into the pipeline.
Chevron says it has since improved its leak detection monitoring system because it was several hours before any breach of the pipeline was detected.
Less than six months later, not far from the first spill site, Chevron had another failure in which a valve cracked after the line was improperly cleared of flushing chemicals.
The second failure led Salt Lake City to hire a pipeline safety consultant — at Chevron's expense — to help assure residents and city officials the pipeline is safe to resume operations.
LaHood's announcement comes in advance of an April 18 pipeline safety forum in Washington, D.C., where industry leaders, state officials and others will discuss ways to improve the safety and efficiency of pipeline infrastructure.
“People deserve to know that they can turn on the lights, the heat, or the stove without endangering their families and neighbors,” LaHood said. “The safety of the American public is my top priority and I am taking on this critical issue to avoid future tragedies we have seen in Allentown and around the country.”
Among other things, LaHood wants Congress to increase the maximum civil penalties for pipeline violations from $100,000 per day to $250,000 per day, and from $1 million for a series of violations to $2.5 million for a series of violations.
His administration also plans to create a new web page to provide the public, community planners, builders and utility companies information about local pipeline networks.
“To the American public, it doesn’t matter who has jurisdiction over these essential utility lines. We have a responsibility to work together to prevent the loss of life and environmental damage that can result from poor pipeline conditions,” LaHood said.
Although pipeline incidents resulting in serious injury or death are down nearly 50 percent over the last 20 years, the department is pointing to a series of recent incidents that underscore the need to make improvements to pipeline infrastructure.
Email:aodonoghue@ksl.com
