A natural gas explosion at a Columbia Heights apartment last month injured one woman and displaced more than 100 residents who have yet to return to the four-story building that D.C. Department of Buildings (DOB) has since deemed inhabitable.
In the months leading up to the Sept. 20 incident, similar situations involving natural gas have preoccupied first responders in the District.
In January, a gas explosion on Marion Barry Avenue in Southeast leveled a convenience store and injured one person. Months later, students, teachers and staff at Shirley Chisholm Elementary School in Capitol Hill evacuated their school building after smelling gas. The MacArthur High School community in Northwest had a similar experience this summer when construction workers hit a valve and caused a gas leak near school grounds.
Such incidents, which the Public Service Commission (PSC) has documented as “existing and probable hazards,” have intensified calls among environmentalists for the District and utility companies to embrace electric power as a cleaner, safer alternative to natural gas.
As Department of Buildings (DOB) Director Brian Hanlon recounted, even his agency, a member of the Construction Codes Coordinating Board, is currently involved in that discussion.
“This is an issue that has been discussed pretty thoroughly,” Hanlon told The Informer during the earlier part of October. “I’m sure the debate around electrification will continue and that would impact new construction. There are so many views on that board so we will work to advance a robust debate on whether buildings in the future should be electrified.”
Gas Leaks: An Increasingly Perilous Situation
Reports compiled by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration showed more than 1,200 natural gas leaks recorded in the District in 2022. More than 900 of those leaks were deemed hazardous.
In January, amid Washington Gas’ ongoing endeavor to replace all of the District’s gas lines, the Office of the People’s Counsel submitted a petition to PSC in demand of an investigation of Washington Gas’ response to the increasingly prevalent gas leaks.
By the time PSC filed its petition, Washington Gas had been a decade into ProjectPIPES, a project intended to replace “all the aging, leak-prone pipeline structures with the highest risks and leak rates.” The first phase of ProjectPIPES took place between 2014 and 2019, while the second phase started in 2020 with an anticipated end date of February 2025, thanks to an extension that PSC approved.
In July, the commission rejected the third phase of ProjectPIPES. The regulatory agency instead charged the utility company with developing an alternative plan that targets high-risk portions of the District’s natural gas system with consideration for the District’s climate goals.
On Sept. 27, Washington Gas submitted District SAFE, a $215 million plan the utility company touted as an ideal response to gas leaks and concerns about climate change. With District SAFE now in PSC’s docket, the Public Service Commission is gearing up to collect comments and petitions related to the new plan.
If approved, District SAFE will start in March 2025 and wrap up in 2027. It will facilitate the replacement of 12 miles of gas line, along with the replacement and remediation of 2,612 service lines, the replacement of 966 service lines with main lines, and 554 service transfers.
In their Oct. 4 Informer op-ed, Kevin Murphy, Washington Gas’ chief engineer and vice president, and Brandon Todd, former Ward 4 D.C. council member and Washington Gas’ senior director of corporate public policy, touted what they called the work necessary to keep District residents safe.
“By proactively replacing aging, leak-prone pipes, we reduce the risk of gas leaks and improve the overall safety and reliability of our system,” Murphy and Todd’s op-ed said. “In addition, District SAFE supports the District’s climate goals by significantly reducing methane emissions in the region. If we replaced all of our aging and leak-prone pipes, we could reduce emissions by more than 90% compared to 2014 levels, because new pipelines have far fewer emissions.”
Some people, like Maurice N. Hall of Washington Interfaith Network (WIN), continue to combat that point of view while speaking to District residents and testing homes for gas leaks.
Hall said his travels across the District showed him that Washington Gas has been spreading misinformation, not only about safe pipe replacement but the utility bill increases associated with gas-to-electric conversions.
Those talking points, he said, distract from the danger looming with natural gas.
“Gas leaks inside and outside the home are inevitable,” said Hall, a member of WIN’s Ward 3 contingent. “There’s a high risk of explosion, pollution of methane gas and the physical health risk. We found in our testing that natural gas hasn’t been the safest for residents. Gas bills are going up and up, and we want residents to have information to counter what Washington Gas is doing.”
Mark Rodeffer, a member of Sierra Club, echoed Hall’s points, pointing out that residents stand to incur much higher utilities costs if Washington Gas continues with its consumer-funded project.
“We’re supposed to end all climate pollution by 2045 — which is not a lot of time,” said Rodeffer, Sierra Club’s National Building Electrification Campaign co-lead. “It doesn’t make sense to spend billions on dirty energy when D.C. agreed to change. If we’re going to be spending that kind of money, we should be helping people.”
Earlier this year, Sierra Club testified before the Public Service Commission in opposition to the third phase of ProjectPIPES. In the months leading up to Washington Gas’ submission of District SAFE, the grassroots organization backed the D.C. government’s petition for a deadline extension that would’ve given Washington Gas more time to engage stakeholders in crafting a climate friendly plan.
However, Washington Gas, and ultimately PSC, objected to the deadline extension out of concern about maintaining continuity in Washington Gas’ 40-year accelerated gas line replacement plan. Rodeffer said Washington Gas’ response seems par for the course.
“Washington Gas… is prepared to do things behind closed doors without much public engagement. It’s the easiest way for them to operate,” Rodeffer said. “They hired a number of lobbyists and fought bills behind closed doors. We see them ramping up. We wish they spent that money on their business model. Unfortunately, that’s not what they want to do.”
D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen Holds Steadfast to Climate Goals
Washington Gas didn’t respond to The Informer’s inquiry about its response to gas leaks, like what happened at Shirley Chisholm Elementary School. In August, the utility provider filed a petition with the Public Service Commission requesting a second year of rate hikes totaling 12%.
They also expressed a desire to divert $2 million from the District’s Sustainable Energy Trust Fund (SETF) to fund feasibility studies about the use of methane gas.
Earlier this year, the D.C. Council funded SETF and D.C. Green Bank after D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), in her Fiscal Year 2025 budget proposal, diverted SETF dollars toward the payment of the District’s electric bill.
SETF funds the Healthy Homes and Residential Electrification Amendment Act, which finances the gas-to-electric retrofitting of 30,000 low- and moderate-income District homes. Amid the robust discussion about SETF and ProjectPIPES, most of the D.C. Council stood in opposition to Washington Gas’ pipe replacement project earlier this year.
A Feb. 7 letter sent to PSC, which included signatures from nine out of 13 council members, cited the CleanEnergy DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2018 and the Climate Commitment Amendment Act of 2022 as indicators of the “fossil-free future” that D.C. leaders want to create.
For D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), chair of the council’s Committee on Transportation & the Environment, a complete overhaul of the District’s gas lines, as initially requested by Washington Gas, doesn’t align with that future. Instead, it prioritizes the utility provider’s profits over District residents’ economic and physical wellbeing.
“If they move forward with ProjectPIPES, it will be D.C. rate payers covering the costs,” Allen told The Informer. “The business model is to sell gas, and it sounds good to build new infrastructure. It guarantees a captured customer base that will pay for decades.”
Allen went on to express skepticism about whether DistrictSAFE would indeed facilitate a complete alignment with the District’s clean climate goals, rather than “nibble at the edges” of the original Phase III plan that Washington Gas submitted earlier this year.
Washington Gas’ inability to follow through on the Public Service Commission’s demands, he said, could pose dire consequences for District residents.
“The environmental impacts of lead pipes are disproportionately shouldered by Black and brown families in D.C. We have to be bolder to make big transformations and transmissions,” Allen told The Informer. “My hope is that Canadian-owned AltaGas [under which Washington Gas operates] sees where their future lies rather than protect what they got. A lot of people would be willing to work with them if [they are] convinced that’s where they’re headed.”