This past Saturday I was on McCarthy Road in Oak Hill for the Tree Planting class for representatives (including Adam Peller!) of the neighborhood groups where Newton Tree Conservancy is planting trees this Saturday, and we got eight of the trees planted. I also met one of the owners of 54 McCarthy, Jody, who is helping plant the trees even though her house is one where we will NOT be planting due to underground gas leaks.
We knew about the leak from the 2010 Newton Natural Gas Leak Tree Survey. It was still there in October when we did our gas leak checks at the tree planting spots. But I was amazed to hear they’ve actually had their gas leak for 18 years!
They noticed the smell not long after they bought the house. Jody and Mae, their former next door neighbor at 8 Hay Road, used to smell it together and regularly called the gas company, who always said it wasn’t serious enough to fix. Over the years Jody and her husband got busy with other issues, and their two kids, and had sort of given up on it getting fixed. Then with the tree planting coming up, she called National Grid in October, and again last Friday. National Grid came out both times, as they are legally required to do within an hour of a gas smell report, and there are fresh spray paint marks in front, but although they said a supervisor would call her, no one has.
This isn’t the only place we’re not planting trees due to gas leaks, even just this fall. There’s another leak on McCarthy, and another at 66 Channing Road. There’s a whole block on Parmenter Road where we were going to plant seven trees in 2010 until we tested, and a few more places where we either couldn’t plant at all or had to avoid the logical planting spot. I’m not saying leaks where there are no trees should get fixed before leaks that are affecting existing trees, but really, how long should someone have to put up with a gas smell in front of their house?
And how much methane, 21 times worse a greenhouse gas than the products of its combustion, has escaped into the atmosphere over the 18 years?
No, I can’t top that but I’ve got one in the same league. About a week after we moved in to the last house we lived in (West Roxbury), I smelled a faint smell of gas when walking past my next door neighbor’s house. I talked to the neighbor and he said that the gas company already knew about it and had been out twice to investigate but hadn’t found the problem.
We lived in that house for about 15 years. Over 13 of those years we, and many other neighbors, noticed faint smells of gas in various specific places over a wide swatch of the neighborhood. Once or twice a year the gas company would investigate but never got to the bottom of it.
Finally, about 13 years after we moved in they found a gas leak about 1/4 mile away from our house. The leaked gas was apparently traveling down underground passages and leaking to the surface at various spots, a great distance away from where the leak was. On our street, it killed two trees in front of my neighbor’s house and four more surrounding trees were noticeably affected but not killed.
I find the gas leaks frightening and appalling – house explosions maybe rare, but I’d be a lot happier is I knew National Grid was upgrading it’s pipelines as well as it’s gas meters in Newton. I frequently smell gas walking along the streets in Newton (big leak in front of BC on Beacon).
I, also, find the CEO’s compensation appalling – between $7.5 and $6.3 million per year for the last 3 years. IMHO no CEO of a public utility or publicly regulated utility should make more than the president.
http://insiders.morningstar.com/trading/executive-compensation.action?t=NGG
There is some good news re gas leaks. Marblehead State Rep. Lori Ehrlich has been working on a set of bills to require faster repair and more disclosure:
http://loriehrlich.com/2011-2012-session-37.html
I checked with her office last week and learned the main bill at least has passed the House and is awaiting action in the State Senate. I didn’t know it was unanimous until I read the article in today’s Globe:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/11/20/boston-riddled-with-mostly-small-natural-gas-leaks-boston-university-study-finds/m1LvyBqHhdVhCQEZM60mwJ/story.html?event=event12
I have a call in to Cindy Creem’s office to see what prospects are for passage before this legislature adjourns. If the language it what’s on Lori Ehrlich’s site above, it would require even non-hazardous (to people or buildings) leaks to be repaired in three years.
Some good news on McCarthy Road! Heard from Jody that a National Grid crew was there all day Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, working on her gas leak. It was worse than they thought, there was a second leak which they promised to come back and fix after the holiday. After 18 years I’m guessing they will make absolutely sure there’s a zero reading, so I anticipate we’ll be able to plant two trees there in spring. :-)