Natural gas is escaping from more than 3,300 leaks in Boston’s underground pipelines, according to a new Boston University study that underscores the explosion risk and environmental damage from aging infrastructure under city sidewalks and streets.
The vast majority of the leaks are tiny, although six locations had gas levels higher than the threshold at which explosions could occur. Although there have been no reports of explosions in Boston from any of the leaks, the study comes three years after a Gloucester house exploded probably because of a cracked and corroded gas main dating to 1911.
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Dear Ms. Daley went back to school to brush up on environmental journalism but apparently did not learn any more science or engineering than the little she knew, lack of which has long been her main obstacle. Readers frustrated with the skimpy information in this article can find more on the topic in the campus publication, BU Today, for September 29 of this year. [ Rich Barlow, Fueling global warming not homes, at http://www.bu.edu/today/2011/natural-gas-leaks-fuel-global-warming-not-homes/ ] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As usual with her articles, Ms. Daley leaves out any quantitative information. Instead, she blathers on about "tiny leaks" and "exceedingly small" risks. A skeptical reader will note she never says how much gas is known to be leaking, how that compares with the amounts of gas being used by homes and industries, or how many gas explosions per year result from the leaks. Far up the pipeline from Boston, environmental studies of hydrofracturing in the Marcellus shale indicate that leaks and accidents in the production zones release around 5 percent of the gas extracted, before it ever reaches transportation pipelines. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ms. Daley also offers readers no useful spatial information, showing individual streets where the worst leaks are found. Mr. Barlow's article in BU Today has an aerial photo of neighborhoods around the BU campus annotated with bar graphs of measurements taken along some of the streets. Readers can see that the stretch of Commonwealth Ave. between Packard's Corner and the BU Bridge is a major source of leaks. There are also huge, individual leaks along Harvard Street in Brookline between Coolidge Corner and Allston--near Babcock St. and Thorndike St. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe just to prove that Mr. Daley is not alone in lapses of knowledge, Mr. Barlow offers up a whopper in his BU Today article, when describing a leak of 400 cf/day discovered in Newton. He cites a claim that the "average houseold uses about 200 cf/day" of natural gas. In fact, a household using natural gas only for cooking and water heating uses several hundred cubic feet per month, not per day, so that the leak found in Newton was clearly a major hazard.
Calm down. The article is about gas leaks in Boston. Don't attack the reporter if are against hydrofracturing in the Marcellus.
Why doesn't the state and/or city require the utility company to install automatic shut-offs to stop the leak from following the pipe into a building? that is the question!
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There's more this than just "Boston"; what about Cambridge, Brookline and the rest? Will they "frak" this source and sell it back to us?
Most leaks may not represent an explosion hazard, but when you have a small persistent leak below the curb or sidewalk of your home, its odor pollution, it makes working in the yard less fun. Its both a blessing and a curse that the odor additive is so readily detected - a blessing because most major leaks are quickly detected, but a curse to those of us who find even traces of that smell annoying. Is 150 miles a year really "as quickly as possible" to replace pipes? There's over 300 miles of road just in Newton, how many miles of pipe does NGRID and NSTAR ship gas through, it must be many thousands.
With consumers paying rock bottom prices for gas, what a good time to ask DPU for a small "maintenance rate increase" specifically to accelerate the replacement of aged pipes.