PG&E Releases Its List of Pipelines at Risk; None Run Through Walnut Creek

Pacific Gas & Electric, pressured by state regulators after the deadly Sept. 9 San Bruno gas line explosion, released a list Monday of its 100 most dangerous pipelines. 

PG&E's ranking is based on the potential for corrosion, design flaws and third-party damage. At the top of the list were several sections of a petroleum pipeline that run through the Livermore Valley.  PG&E's 30-inch San Bruno pipeline was No. 16 on the list, but not the portion of the steel line that ruptured.

Along the Interstate 680 corridor, the biggest fuel line is the 10-inch Kinder Morgan pipeline that lies alongside the Iron Horse Trail and runs through the heart of Walnut Creek. 

This pipeline carries fuel just feet away from schools, motels, homes and parks. This high-pressure pipeline burst in Walnut Creek in 2004 -- a half mile or so from downtown, across South Broadway from Las Lomas High School and adjacent to a residential neighborhood. A backhoe struck a section of the pipe and set off an explosion that shot 60 feet into the air, killed five workers, badly burned five others, and destroyed one house.

The Houston-based Kinder Morgan energy company was found, under a 2007 criminal plea agreement, to be the "proximate cause of the puncture of the line and of the deaths and injuries that resulted," the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Kinder Morgan, the nation's largest underground-fuel shipper, had failed to mark a bend properly in its Walnut Creek pipeline near where an East Bay Municipal Utilities District crew was working on a water main. 

The Contra Costa Times reported that local officials responded favorably to PG&E's release of its list of  high-risk pipes but cautioned that the list should not be cause for alarm.

"It's good because it gives people who live near the pipelines information so they can better understand the risk, " Randy Sawyer, chief of the Contra Costa County hazardous materials program, told the Times. "Someone may decide they want to move."

Sawyer told the Times that he thinks the risk isn't "huge" because PG&E explosions are rare.