Hey, PGW, step on the gas
Waiting 88 years for infrastructure repairs comes as a pretty big blow
Editor's note:
Starting today, the editorial page is making some changes: Editorials will now run three days a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the page will feature Daily News senior writer Will Bunch's Attytood column.
IMAGINE how terrible it would be if you had to live over a vast reservoir of explosive material held in old containers that were in danger of leaking.
Actually, that's exactly how Philadelphians do live in this city, with its 3,024 miles of gas mains and 475,000 service lines that feed from those mains into homes and businesses.
The safety problems are real. More than half of those miles of mains are made of ancient materials that deteriorate over time: We have 1,500 miles of cast-iron pipe and 493 miles of unprotected steel pipe.
Everyone familiar with the situation knows that these pipes have to be replaced, and the Philadelphia Gas Works, our city-owned gas utility, has a plan to replace them by 2102.
That date is not a misprint. It is 88 years from now.
This explains a report last week from the staff of the state Public Utility Commission that said, in so many words: Hey, PGW, speed it up.
Among other things, the PUC is responsible for pipeline safety and it asked its staff to prepare the report. That said, it does not have the power to order more money to be devoted to replacing old gas mains. PGW and the city must do it.
Though politely worded and laced with charts and graphs, the staff report makes for frightening reading.
* More than 1,170 miles of the gas mains were installed before 1940.
* The miles of cast-iron pipes still in operation in Philadelphia is more than double the cast-iron miles of any other gas company in the state.
* PGW experienced more than double the number of hazardous leaks than any other gas company in the state in 2013. Last year, the number went even higher. There were 7,600 total leaks, of which 3,448 were classified as hazardous. Hazardous status means that repairs must be made immediately because of high risk.
Replacing gas mains is not cheap. In this city, it costs an average of $1.3 million per mile.
The PUC staff outlines ways the utility could add millions to the fund for repairs. One is to halt PGW's $18 million payment to the city. Another is to increase the 5 percent charge on the portion of customer's bills that goes for such improvements as replacing gas mains. Taking that charge up to 7.5 percent would raise an additional $11 million - and raise average bills by $1.58 a month. Taking it up to 10 percent would raise $22 million.
The Nutter administration's attempt to sell PGW to UIL failed last year thanks to City Council. UIL had not agreed to faster replacement, but they would have been in a better position to finance a main-replacement schedule that would have cut the current schedule in half. Now, the burden of finding the money to speed the schedule of replacement will fall on taxpayers and ratepayers.
But since we are the ones living over this vast reservoir of explosive gas, we should take the PUC report to heart and speed up replacing ancient gas mains - before the inevitable happens.
