Politics & Government

Survey Finds Most States Hide Pipeline Safety Data

The survey from the Pipeline Safety Trust comes in the wake of a San Francisco Chronicle story that reported that a state law in California prevents people from finding out information about pipelines running underneath their neighborhoods.

Seventy-five percent of the states in the country do an abysmal job of providing enough information to the public, local governments and state legislators about pipeline safety and keeping pipeline regulators accountable, a national pipeline safety organization found in a recent survey. 

California ranks in the middle in terms of providing access to pipeline safety information and joined almost every other state in getting bad marks in the survey, which was conducted by the Pipeline Safety Trust, an organization formed after the 1999 gasoline explosion in Bellingham, WA, that works to keep the pipeline industry accountable so that further accidents don't happen. 

Overall, only eight states and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration provided at least half of the information, with the vast majority providing far less information that was difficult to find. PHMSA topped the survey for transparency, providing all the information, according to the Trust. 

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"Only when state pipeline safety agencies provide clear evidence that they are on top of these safety issues will trust in pipeline safety be rebuilt," Carl Weimer, the Pipeline Safety Trust’s executive director, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, it appears that many states seem to care little about providing the public with basic pipeline safety information to allow the public to decide if things are as safe as can be.” 

The survey comes in the wake of Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle story that reported that a state law in California still prevents people from finding out information about pipelines running underneath their neighborhoods, even after a that a lack of regulatory oversight over pipelines partially led to last year's pipeline explosion in San Bruno. 

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"In light of the recent revelation from California that some states actually preclude the public from finding out about the safety of pipelines,…the Pipeline Safety Trust hopes that this survey will help move more states toward greater transparency and inclusion of their citizenry to help make pipelines even safer," the organization concluded in the survey. 

To complete the survey findings, the Pipeline Safety Trust looked for eight basic items on each state's website and then rated how easy those items were to find. The eight items were: 

  • contact information for agency staff; 
  • contact information for pipeline companies; 
  • pipeline safety regulations; 
  • transmission pipeline maps; 
  • incident data; inspection records; 
  • enforcement records; and 
  • excavation damage data. 

California is the only state in the country that has different agencies for regulating natural gas and liquid pipelines. With the state's gas pipeline data, information wasn't accessible at all in five of the categories the Trust looked at. On the other hand, contact information for pipeline companies and information about regulations were easy to find.

To find out more about the Pipeline Safety Trust's survey, view a copy of the findings here


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