|
Activists who forced PG&E to agree to replace a gas pipeline under the future Schulte Road sports fields are worried about a second pipeline.
 Pipelines that run under the site of the future Schulte Road sports park are causing some activists concern. Press file photo As Tracy activists fought a winning legal battle to force utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to replace a natural gas pipeline below children’s sports fields, they subpoenaed documents that raise questions about the safety of a second high-pressure pipeline that runs through rural southwestern Tracy and below the planned fields.
Subpoenaed e-mails show that a pair of
2-foot patches of "unacceptable corrosion" were found by computerized PG&E tests in 2001, where as much as three-quarters of the thickness of 26-inch-wide pipeline’s wall had been eaten through.
Those patches were 80 miles south of Tracy, according to company spokeswoman Nicole Tam. She said the patches were not repaired because a follow-up visual inspection "determined that the problem was localized and well within the tolerances provided in the pipeline safety standards."
Tam said state regulators corroborated the result with a visual inspection, but there’s no supporting paperwork, because none was legally required.
The corroded sections of pipeline are due to be tested again next year using the same type of tests that Tam said were ignored in 2001 after they were judged through the visual inspection to have "overstated" the corrosion.
Also of concern to the activists is a 2003 PG&E report that concluded the maximum pressure of natural gas in the second pipeline was greater than the pressure federal safety guidelines would normally allow below the sports fields.
But the pipeline passed the risk assessment because it passed hydrological tests in 1972 — the same year the pipeline was laid.
The tests flushed water down the pipeline to gauge its strength, according to Tam.
"Pipelines that have successfully passed a hydro test," she said, "are allowed to operate at higher pressures than those not tested."
Bob Curry, a retired professor of Environmental Geology and Hydrology at University of California, Santa Cruz, was hired by nonprofit Californians for Renewable Energy as an expert witness in the recent court battle about the 14-year-old, 36-inch pipeline PG&E agreed to replace.
The nonprofit joined a complaint to the California Public Utilities Commission filed in March by Carole Dominguez, an accountant and mother of five who ran unsuccessfully for the Tracy City Council in 2006. Local activist and shoe store owner Bob Sarvey also joined the complaint. The nonprofit seeks $264,500 from PG&E, and Sarvey seeks $49,100 to cover the costs of work done in the case, case records show. Dominguez asked for no money.
Curry said he met with PG&E employees and reviewed technical and confidential pipeline documents.
"They demonstrated to the attorneys and I that they didn’t have a very good handle on the safety of the older pipeline, which was one of the earliest pipelines put in in California," Curry said. "They were not as certain about the safety of the issues as they gave the impression of being when they talked to the public."
Pits have been corroded into the surface of the 26-inch pipeline, according to both Curry and documents reviewed by the Tracy Press.
"The pits are at the limit of acceptability," Curry said. "Both the older pipe and the newer pipe had problems, but the older pipe was much worse. When the pits themselves corrode to the depth that it can no longer hold the pressure of the natural gas in the pipe, then it explodes."
A natural gas pipeline explosion that killed 12 New Mexican campers in 2000 was caused by corroded pits, according to Curry.
The 35-year-old double-wrapped tape that protects the second pipeline against corrosion "doesn’t last more than 10 to 15 years," Curry said. "It wouldn’t be legal if put in today."
The newer 36-inch pipeline, by contrast, is coated with a modern epoxy.
Spokeswoman Tam said the tape is part of an outer protection system that’s in "good working condition."
Dominguez led the recent legal battle that overturned a waiver that had would have allowed PG&E to save an estimated $2.5 million by not replacing the 36-inch pipeline after it failed federal safety standards. Dominguez charged that PG&E lied when it applied for the waiver, and she says she distrusts assurances by Tam or other company representatives that the pipeline is safe.
"I think a lot of the statements that they make are just PR," Dominguez said. "It’s just the spin factory at work."
Sarvey said they hope to find a way to force PG&E to replace or remove the second pipeline.
"I’m still plotting and planning — I haven’t really come up with a solution for it," Sarvey said. "I’m hoping the council blows (the sports park project) off and puts a solar farm out there. … I know it’s a long shot, but it’s what I’m hoping."
Sarvey said his biggest fear for the safety of the second pipeline is that farming and construction vehicles could have driven over it and weakened it during the past three decades.
The tests conducted by PG&E on the pipelines are "effective at detecting pipeline corrosion," wrote senior PG&E engineer Chih Hung Lee for a Department of Transportation hearing in 1999, but "unreliable and less exact" at detecting other pipeline weaknesses.
When Stockton-based W.C. Maloney was hired by the city to remove antennas from the sports fields earlier this year, the company laid inch-thick steel plates and four-foot high mounds over the ground to protect the pipelines before driving cranes, excavators and other heavy equipment over them, according to John Lynch of Wright Environmental Services, who was hired by the city to supervise the work.
A Chevron crude oil line runs parallel to the gas pipelines. The pipes range from 1½- to 3-feet wide, and they’re buried 2 feet below the ground. All three pipes also run below the site of the proposed Ellis subdivision, where city officials hope to build a resort-style aquatics center.
The city expects children to play soccer, football, baseball and softball above the pipes by early 2009. PG&E is required under the recent settlement agreement to replace the 36-inch pipeline within two years. The safety of the 26-inch pipeline has not been legally challenged, in part because it is not believed to violate any safety laws.
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
ives, tucker, tolbert, abercrombie, sundberg, and attaboy hobbsie
time for plan b.
build it now
at the corner of 11th and chrisman
let our children play now, safely
thanks thanks thanks to Dominguez and Sarvey
what kind of foolish person would now buy a house on the ellis property? or build a water park on this pending disaster?
greedy majority council members would. (but they wouldn't live there)