CHANGE OR STAY THE COURSE?
Legislators consider lifelines as utility damage prevention law nears sunset
Pennsylvania legislators have staked out two paths for reauthorizing the state’s One Call utility damage prevention law before it expires at the end of the year.
One path, advancing in the Senate, would make substantial changes to the 42year-old law in an effort to limit the number of potentially dangerous line strikes that happen daily across the state. Excavation safety advocates have pushed for years to expand the universe of underground lines the law covers and to enhance oversight by shifting enforcement responsibility to a state agency that will dedicate a bigger team to the task.
The other path, introduced in the House this month, would simply extend the life of the Underground Utility Line Protection Law for one more year and buy lawmakers time to make decisions about how it should change. That effort is supported by small oil and gas operators and lawmakers reluctant to give more authority to the state Public Utility Commission.
Both bills are moving forward, but with less than a dozen voting days scheduled before the current legislative session ends, time is running out to commit to a direction. After this week, the legislature is scheduled to meet again in mid-October.
“If that law sunsets, we’re all in trouble,” said Brenda Reigle, executive director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Utility Contractors Association, which represents utility and excavation contractors.
Without the law, excavators would not be required to call into the system that alerts utilities to mark their lines before digging starts, she said. “That’s dangerous business.”
There is broad support, from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, Gov. Tom Wolf, Republican leaders in the Senate and the Pennsylvania One Call System, for comprehensive revisions to the law.
The PUC says it makes sense for the commission to take over enforcement because about 80 percent of the more than 6,000 accidental hits reported each year involve lines that belong to utilities the commission already regulates.
The PUC has a goal of cutting the number of hits in half, even as it wants to expand the universe of lines required to be marked before excavators begin digging.
“Every one of these hits jeopardizes the safety of everyone around,” commission spokesman Nils Hagen-Frederiksen said.
Resistance from oil and gas companies
Opposition to a comprehensive update to the law is primarily driven by conventional oil and gas production companies who do not want to be required to register and mark rural pipelines that connect to their wells, saying the cost and manpower burden of complying would be out of proportion to the safety benefits.
They support House Bill 2308, which would extend the current law for a year.
“It would give us a little more time to really look at this instead of rushing through,” said Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association president Dan Weaver. The Wexford trade organization’s members include both conventional and unconventional operators.
Marcellus Shale producers have generally supported lifting the One Call exemption for rural gas gathering lines and many shale gas companies have registered their pipelines voluntarily.
The one-year extension measure, introduced by Montgomery County Republican Rep. Robert Godshall, was advanced unanimously last week by the House Consumer Affairs committee he chairs.
Mr. Godshall said he wants to explore whether it is necessary or practical to end exemptions for categories of pipelines that are currently excluded in the law. He is also skeptical of transferring enforcement authority from the state Department of Labor and Industry to the PUC, which he referred to as “empire building.”
His preference is to hold a hearing next year to try to find common ground among different stakeholders.
“After all, the One Call system we have now has been there for 42 years, so I’m not sure that one more year of it being operative is the greatest calamity in the world, as some people feel,” he said.
Pushing for change this year
Many advocates for a stronger law offered tepid support for the fall-back option, but they are confident that there is time and will to adopt more sweeping changes.
The PUC is backing Senate Bill 1235, the substantial revision that the commission helped write. “That’s the mechanism for not only reauthorizing One Call but making the whole system better,” Mr. Hagen-Frederiksen said.
Leaders of the Republican majority in the Senate would prefer to act on something more substantial than a simple extension and are interested in moving forward with Senate Bill 1235, Senate GOP spokeswoman Jennifer Kocher said.
The bill would extend the law for five years and remove existing exemptions for municipal and state roadwork and oil and gas pipelines. It also includes provisions for mapping underground lines, sets up a damage prevention committee and lays out a system for fees and fines.
House Republican spokesman Stephen Miskin said he does not know if there is support in his chamber for the Senate’s approach, but Mr. Godshall’s one-year extension bill is on the House calendar this week.
“Any gas line that gets hit that’s unknown can kill anyone,” said Ms. Reigle from the utility contractors association. “It doesn’t matter what size that gas line is.”
A worker died from burns suffered after striking an unmarked, high-pressure
“If that law sunsets, we’re all in trouble.” — Brenda Reigle, executive director, National Utility Contractors Association, Pennsylvania chapter
natural gas gathering line with an excavator last year in Armstrong County. The pipeline was not registered or marked because current law did not require it.
The tragedy was especially bitter because the company that owned the unmarked pipeline used the 811 safe digging hotline to ensure its workers did not hit any known lines as they excavated the pipeline trench between 2010 and 2012, Pennsylvania One Call president William Kiger said.
Mr. Kiger, who has been with the West Mifflin-based nonprofit for the four decades of its existence, has seen the reauthorization deadline for the law tick uncomfortably close before.
“I have my faith in them that they will do something,” he said of the legislature. “If it’s an extension, I’ll live with it. But the reality is, we would like to see some of the exemptions, if not all of the exemptions, go away.”