In March 2015, for the first time, every utility in Massachusetts filed a report with the Department of Public Utilities on the location of the natural gas leaks in their territory.
Natural gas is sent to our homes and buildings primarily through pipes under the street. New England has some of the oldest infrastructure in the United States, including its natural gas pipes. As natural gas pipes age, the seams and material break down, and begin to leak natural gas
We have over 3,500 gas leaks in greater Boston. The leaks account for 10% of the state’s inventory of greenhouse gasses. The gas companies have known about these leaks for years and done little about them. All the lost gas is paid for by rate payers and not the gas company costing residents 90mln a year. The National Grid is incentivized to not fix the leaks. The leak on the corner of Park Drive and Beacon St in Boston was reported in 1985. It still has not been fixed.
Call your state representative and senator at 617-722-2000 and ask them to support these bills. If you don’t know your state rep or senator, just call the number above and follow the prompts.
Current state bills:
Repairing grade 3 leaks (HR2871) requires gas companies to check for and repair gas leaks whenever significant road work is being done. Currently only potentially explosive leaks must be repaired. According to the utilities’ own data, some of the non-explosive leaks in Boston date back to 1985. Fixing all leaks when the streets are open would prevent repeated digging up and repaving of roads, thus decreasing overall cost and disruption. The bill has 47 cosponsors.
Consumer protection bill (HR2870) stops the utility companies from passing the cost for the lost gas onto the consumers. Passage of this bill would create an incentive for utility companies to fix the leaks as quickly as possible, starting with the biggest leaks. When a similar bill was passed in Texas, 55% of the leaks were fixed within 3 years. This bill has 43 cosponsors (to see them, click on Miscellaneous).
The sponsorship for both is bipartisan and from both House and Senate. The sponsors of both bills are Rep. Lori Ehrlich and Sen. James Eldridge. Making these bills into law will strongly incentivize the utilities to fix the leaks in the least expensive, least disruptive way possible.
http://www.heetma.org/squeaky-leak/learn-more/
that every consumer should support.
To reach your State Representative call 617-722-2000.
To reach your State Senator call 617-722-1455.
Saving natural gas ratepayers $90 million dollars a year is not chicken feed. Or as Senator Dirksen used to say : ” A million here and a million there. Pretty soon you’re talking about real money”. 🙂
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Lifting the net metering cap is also common sense, but Speaker DeLeo at the bequest of the Utility Industry passed a really bad bill instead. Something tells me that the powers that be are mounting opposition to this commonsense legislation as well.
The leaks cost ratepayers $90 mil a year, but repairing them wouldn’t save $90 mil a year, unless you think labor, materials, and capital equipment are all free.
I think we should fix a heck of a lot more leaks, but don’t conflate stopping the pollution and reducing the “need” for more gas pipelines with saving money. Especially because the gas LDC (National Grid et al) don’t make any profits on the gas itself. The rates are set so Grid neither wins nor loses on sales; they make profits investing in the infrastructure.
If you are scratching your heads now wondering why they don’t fix the leaks then… so am I. I believe these kinds of legislative proposals, if passed, will help Grid and friends see the light on this. But it won’t save $90 M/year.
of costs and benefits. One that includes avoided capital and O&M costs and that values things like those urban street trees and the greenhouse-gas effects.
As for the head scratching thing, I just chalk it up to the awesome stupidity of these regulated monopolies. Put this investment into the ratebase and you are talking a nice chink of change for the investors.
Same story with energy efficiency: it’s a robust profit center today but the IOUs practically had to be forced into it at gunpoint back in the 90s.
thanks for your comments, lets say its 45mln a year, its every year, and some of these leaks are 5,10, and 30 years old. there must be a better way
the green house gas issue is huge- methane or non burned gas is very bad stuff . not good for anyone
Let’s not just pull a number from our collective hindquarters.
Why not ask the sponsors how much it would cost? I’d bet Grid et. al. have already told ’em.
I knew that Massachusetts has a problem with these leaks. I did not realize that consumers were on the hook to pay for the resulting lossage, and I did not realize that there were no incentives such as HR2871 to encourage the gas companies to repair these leaks.
I also did not realize that this has been the situation since 1985 — more than thirty years.
Has anyone in the legislature offered a reason why these weren’t made law decades ago? Not too long ago, the legislature acted within hours to enact new legislation to protect the privacy of women riding public transportation from videographers taking then-legal “upskirts”.
It seems to me that this issue has rather more urgency, as a matter of public safety. Is there any substantive opposition to either of these? Is there any reason these can’t be made law in approximately the same timeframe as the salacious “peeping” legislation?
until last march the data was not public; no one realized how bad it was.
until last march the data was not public;
no one realizedthe public didn’t know how bad it was.AND 40 CO-SPONSORS IN THE SENATE.
I have never heard a rational reason for opposing them and it should certainly be a higher priority than the ‘upskirts peeping’ legislation.
It’s a non-partisan no-brainer !
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Gas leaks kill street trees by suffocation. The NH3 pushes out the O2. Fixing gas leaks will improve the health of the urban forest…