State Orders Columbia Gas To Take More Safety Measures After Leak

LAWRENCE, MA — In response to the Sept. 27 gas leak in Lawrence, the state Department of Public Utilities issued another set of orders to Columbia Gas of Massachusetts Tuesday, governing its work in the Merrimack Valley. Columbia Gas is required to pay for an outside auditor to examine all its pipeline work done as part of the Merrimack Valley restoration and do quality control on abandoned services covering around 700 homes. The latest set of orders come over a year after the gas explosions that killed one, injured more than 20 and damaged or destroyed more than 130 buildings in the Merrimack Valley.

The order specifies that the department will contract the audit, not the company. Columbia Gas is required to respond "promptly and fully" to any requests for information from the auditor.

DPU Chairman Matthew Nelson said in his letter issuing the orders that the new requirements were based on the September leak and existing concerns about Columbia Gas's restoration work.

"Restoration efforts involved, among other things, abandoning 4,900 existing service lines and replacing them with new services that currently provide gas to customers. Recent inspections have confirmed that much of the work performed on these abandoned services failed to comply with applicable Massachusetts and federal law," Nelson wrote.

In addition to the audit and quality control, Nelson ordered that "By October 7, 2019, Columbia Gas shall submit a detailed work plan to the Department describing how it intends to address the estimated 2,200 locations, at which an inside meter set was moved outside the property as part of the abandoned service work completed during the Merrimack Valley restoration."

The company has a Oct. 18 deadline for the quality control on abandoned services.

Columbia Gas said in a statement, "We have been working closely with the DPU and our other government partners as we develop our plan to expand the compliance checks of abandoned service lines in the Merrimack Valley. We take seriously our responsibility to provide our customers with safe and reliable gas service and we are aligned with today’s order from the DPU. We will be conducting compliance checks on an additional 2,220 old service lines in the coming weeks. These compliance checks cover customers with meters currently inside their homes or businesses who had service lines abandoned during the fall 2018 recovery effort. We recognize the inconvenience this review may cause for our customers and we sincerely apologize."