Posted by
Warner Todd Huston on Thursday, August 04, 2011 12:17:16 PM
-By Warner Todd Huston
Back in September of 2010, a gas pipeline running underneath
the city of San Bruno, California ruptured. The resulting explosion killed
eight people. A recently finished investigation has revealed safety and
engineering failures at many levels but, sadly, even the state agency charged
with investigating seems to be hoping that the failures are hushed up. Why?
Politics, of course.
Dennis Wyatt of the Manteca Bulletin read
the new report issued by the California Public Utilities Commission
(CPUC), the government agency charged with investigating the failures that led
to the disaster, and he finds that the CPUC report "comes off more of a
lapdog" than it does a watchdog of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E).
The failed pipeline was built in 1956 and ran under the
intersection of Glenview Drive and Earl Avenue in a residential section of the
city. The section that failed (Line 132) exploded killing eight people and
destroying 38 homes. 70 more homes were damaged by the explosion, 18 were left
uninhabitable.
But even though the pipeline was laid in 1956, the
investigation found that the welds and engineering of the project did not even
meet the safety and other standards of the 50’s nor was the pipeline been properly
assessed for safety today. Other failures were discovered, as well.
The government found that dealing with PG&E was
difficult because of the obstinate "culture" of the energy producer,
PG&E had a deficient system of records keeping, PG&E was admirably
focused on the safety of its employees but was not as interested in the safety
of the public, training of third party vendors was lacking or nonexistent, and
post earthquake inspections went unperformed. There were many, many other
systemic failures, was well.
Wyatt reports that PG&E did not fund many safety
programs that it should have. Yet, the energy provider spent at least $46
million on Prop 16 in a "failed attempt to get voters to amend the
California constitution to provide PG&E with a guaranteed monopoly."
This $43 million is on top of the many millions in fines
that PG&E had already paid for other safety violations going back several
years.
What ever is going on between PG&E and CPUC, it
certainly seems that the citizens of California are the last ones being
considered.