Ted asked on the recent tree thread whether National Grid had resolved the gas leaks. I spent yesterday morning with our gas leak-checker Bob Ackley, testing the spots where we want to plant Newton Tree Conservancy trees later this month, so I have a little more information than before. In a word, no. There are leaks we know they’ve fixed, leaks they say they’ve fixed but we know they haven’t, and a whole lot where we really don’t know. When it comes to believing whether National Grid has fixed a leak, my philosophy is not even “Trust but Verify.” It’s just “Verify.”
As background, back in 2011 after Bob’s Natural Gas Leak Tree Survey had found 378 leaks affecting city trees, and the city decided to defer joining the lawsuit for damages, Marc Welch was tasked with ‘working with’ National Grid. It was a slow process. It was very hard to schedule meetings. The right people never seemed to be available at the same times. But Marc and the Fire Department gave National Grid their high priority leaks to fix, and National Grid went about fixing them. Sort of.
The last status report to Marc, before the Legal Department took over dealing with National Grid, shows the high-priority leaks (yellow), leaks they said they’d repaired (green), and ones they couldn’t find (purple). “Same” means they considered multiple addresses one leak.
Unfortunately, I can’t have complete confidence in this report. I know two leaks that were definitely fixed, including the 18-year gas leak, because we did our own testing before planting trees. On the other hand, there is the 140-158 block of Parmenter Road, pictured above. Gas leaks on both sides kept us from planting seven trees there in spring of 2010. That last remaining tree in the picture, with almost no leaves in August, was removed this winter. Hearing that National Grid said they’d fixed the leaks here, we thought it might finally be possible to plant, though it was not a good sign that residents had not seen any repair activity. 
But our testing yesterday found the leaks are still there, with gas concentrations as high as 65% only six inches down. Yet the November 30, 2012 report says National Grid couldn’t find a leak at 121 Parmenter, and fixed the one at 146-158 Parmenter.
Hard to understand how National Grid could think this whole block was okay, when it seems to be crying out for a new main, as was done up the street toward Waltham.
And that’s not all we found yesterday. Two leaks I didn’t expect among 11 Fessenden St planting spots (one being a guy who did a lot of the legwork organizing the group, who has two stumps on his berm where trees used to be, and was really looking forward to new ones), and another at a potential planting spot on Sterling St.
But some good news regarding a leak at Pine Grove Ave and Crehore in Lower Falls! It was also in Bob Ackley’s 2010 Gas Leak Survey, but, it turns out, was another one that National Grid could not find as of that November 2012 report. Last fall we were looking at replacing a possibly dead linden with no leaves in adjacent Hamilton Park, as part of last November’s Lower Falls planting, but Bob found the Pine Grove leak again (or still). Because at the time it looked like the tree still had live buds for this year, I suggested Nathan Phillips take a look at it for his research on gas leaks and trees, and he brought some of his grad students, and Bob, to try their methodology for measuring how much methane escapes from a leak, which you can take a look at here:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF6XMIygbDk]
Less than a month later, National Grid brought small army of equipment and men and replaced a series of joints in the main. The supervisor promised they would come back after any residual gas would have dissipated, and make sure the leaks were fixed. And we checked yesterday and those leaks are gone. Alas, the linden now appears to be dead after all, but at least we can now plant a new one.
I’m hoping when National Grid does their own checking on Parmenter, they send the Pine Grove guy.
I realize why trees are part of the reason to get this done, but the waste of natural gas, it’s replacement impact (i.e., you deliver 100 units of something and only 98 units get there, you go back to the source and get more…) must be huge. Is there focus on this at a Statewide and/or National level? This must be an issue in wide areas of the country. Imagine if the a certain percentage of Amazon.com product routinely fell off trucks and Amazon thought it cheaper to keep letting it happen than to fit the issue. The litter effect of Amazon’s business practice would be so noticable it there would be senate hearings. Any here?
Actually, this may be the legislative session that something finally gets passed. Marblehead State Rep. Lori Ehrlich has been working on it for the last six years or so. This session a bill passed the House to be ‘engrossed’ whatever that means, 152-0, and the Senate is due to take up their similar version, and proposed amendments, possibly this coming Thursday (postponed from yesterday). A lot of environmental groups think the bill is not strong enough without the amendments. This is the State House News Service report about yesterday:
Thanks for doing all this leg work, Julia. I figured you would be able to find out a lot more and a lot faster than I. The continuing problem with gas leaks concerns me both from the public health and safety as well as the environmental perspective. It would also be a shame to spend all this public money and effort on planting street trees if they are only going to end up dead from gas leaks.
Any state legislators we can influence, we should try to make sure whatever bill passes is as strong as possible. Like having a deadline for fixing Grade 3 leaks (one of the proposed amendments I think) instead of letting them be monitored indefinitely.
And being able to find out where the knows leaks are.
“known” leaks
Julia Malakie — do you happen to know if there is a fix to this leak issue similar to the use of a cement “sock” that the city is using for sewer pipes? Any way to line pipes in place? Or would would fixing the apparent problem in the picture mean extensive digging and replacement of sidewalk, curbs, etc? Is the city willing to partner with the utilities on cost if part of the cost is city property (sidewalks, curbs)?
Hoss, there are plastic inserts that can go inside old leaking cast iron pipe. The larger issue is that our various infrastrucures are treated in isolation of each other. For example, fresh road paving over old leaking pipes.
A national grid employee told me that they had plans to replace every gas main in the city. They’ve been trenching along many of the streets in the last year or two. Sounds like an overwhelming amount of work, but the aging system is apparently failing everywhere. It’s a shame they are investing so much time patching the old system also, but they may have no choice. Nathan, I think the DPW is trying to coordinate the paving schedules with national grid, but I might be confusing that with sewer work.
I was also told that the new standard is to put gas meters outside the house rather than inside, since it’s a likely point of failure, but I don’t see how they could retrofit every house in the city.
I have a grade 2 gas leak on the line that delivers gas to my house off Coyne road. This was documented in November of 2009. A grade 2 leak is supposed to be taken care of within 15 months. It has now been 45 months and nothing has happened except trees dying. Come on boys and girls, why has the tree warden been tasked with working with National Grid to have 378 leaks rectified ? Why did the “city defer to joining the lawsuit “? What does it take to get National Grid on the job ? We must be truly impoverished!
@blueprintbill, I think part of the problem is that there aren’t currently deadlines to fix leaks of different grades. Also there’s no requirement that the gas companies disclose where their leaks are — they only have to report aggregate numbers by Grade to the state regulators, not even broken down by town. So there’s no way to know how long it’s taking them to fix leaks, except anecdotally — the individual ones that someone can smell or somehow know about. The bill under consideration in the Legislature would require Grade 2 leaks be repaired in 12 months (Grade 1 already require continuous action til fixed). Lori Ehrlich’s original bill had a deadline for Grade 3 leaks as well, and I hope that can be restored by amendment when the Senate considers it next week. Also her original bill had better protection for trees.
Inability to get utilities to fix the leaks faster has nothing to do with being “impoverished.” It’s basically that they’re regulated at the state level, so cities and towns don’t have much leverage, except recently with the knowledge gained by the leak surveys Bob Ackley did for the towns in the Mass Public Shade Tree Trust lawsuit. Things aren’t necessarily a lot better for the towns in the lawsuit; that’s slogging through ‘discovery’, which is probably why Newton’s administration decided to take the information and try to deal with National Grid themselves. Neither Newton nor the other towns have gotten any compensation for damages to trees, but maybe we have more leak repair activity happening. Although as noted, I wouldn’t believe all the ones they say are fixed really are.
And I suspect there’s also a ‘beggar thy neighbor’ aspect to all the activity I’ve seen. If any gas company employees are reading, maybe they can comment whether National Grid has added employees to repair leaks, but I’m guessing it’s more likely that any accelerated repairs in Newton mean less getting done in Framingham or Woburn or Needham. That’s why there really needs to be something done at the state level.
There is also NO financial incentive for National Grid to fix the gas leaks because they can just pass the cost of leaked gas onto the consumer. Has this lawsuit been heard: Mass Public Shade Tree Trust lawsuit?
Lucia,
If the gas bill gets increased by passing the cost back onto the customer then OK,
Fix the leaks, and save the trees. Some people will continue further burning oil, some will turn down there thermostats, some will burn more wood (myself), and the rest of the wealthy will absorb the cost. But at least we will have safer greener streets.
That last posting by NHC Member was mistakenly posted by blueprintbill.
Apologies.
Lucia, the lawsuit is working its way through the courts. Last I heard it’s still in discovery. I don’t think there’s any guarantee of a “speedy trial” as there is for criminal (and even some of those take awhile).
I thought earlier House versions of the bill would have limited the ability of gas companies to recover the cost of “LUFG” — lost and unaccounted for gas — in the rates, but I don’t see that language in the current Senate bill. I’ll have to reread both, though, to be sure.
Hi Blueprintbill – I’d be fine with paying more if the gas companies were fixing leaks, the problem is the gas companies have no incentive to fix leaks, because the can pass the cost of the leaked gas onto the consumer.