Under your feet: Buried pipes cross Iowa; some near schools, homes

Natural-gas pipelines similar to one that caused a fatal California blast run within a quarter-mile of four Iowa City schools, a busy neighborhood center, a federally subsidized housing complex and a swimming pool.

In Linn County, the gas transmission lines run under the Cedar River, near Prairie Heights Elementary and a stone's throw from half-million-dollar homes on Cedar Rapids' East Post Road.

Most of the time, natural-gas pipelines pass underground, safely and efficiently providing affordable energy, but from the California explosion to tsunami damage at a Japanese nuclear plant, world attention is turning to the safety and environmental effects of energy.

More than 90 percent of the 300,000 miles of transmission gas lines that cross America may never be inspected for integrity issues, such as cracks, corrosion, faulty welds or thinning, watchdogs say. Most people have no idea where these potentially dangerous pipelines run.

“I had no idea it was back there,” said Aaron Hill, 34, of Iowa City.

Two transmission lines run about 120 feet behind the condo Hill shares with his family on Iowa City's west side. Yellow markers on a nearby street are the only indication of the 10-inch and 16-inch steel pipelines that run about three feet underground.

These transmission lines have a pressure of 600 pounds per square inch. If they exploded, people within 200 feet likely would be killed and structures would be damaged significantly, according to an impact radius model used in the pipeline industry.

Pipeline breaks rare but deadly

Iowa has more than 30,000 miles of natural-gas and hazardous-liquid pipelines. About 8,300 of those miles are transmission lines - bigger, higher pressure tubes that carry gas from places like the Gulf of Mexico and Texas to and through Iowa.

Iowa pipelines have had 42 “significant incidents” from 2001 through 2010, causing seven injuries and about $11 million in damages, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Significant incidents usually involve leaks of natural gas or petroleum products.

Of eight Midwestern states, Iowa was third, behind Kansas and Illinois, in the number of incidents per 10,000 miles of pipeline.

MidAmerican Energy, which owns the bulk of gas pipelines in Linn and Johnson counties, had only four significant incidents in Iowa in the past decade and only one person was injured.

“It's a pretty safe form of transportation, really,” said Tom Padley, MidAmerican's operations manager.

When there's a problem with a pipeline, the results can be devastating.

At 6:11 p.m. Sept. 9, a 30-inch steel transmission pipeline exploded in a residential neighborhood in San Bruno, Calif., a suburb of San Francisco. The gas-fueled blast and a subsequent fire killed eight people and destroyed 38 houses.

The National Transportation Safety Board held three days of hearings on the explosion in March. Democrats in the U.S. Senate are pushing for increased regulations and safety procedures for the pipeline industry.

In July, an oil pipeline near Kalamazoo, Mich., leaked more than 800,000 gallons of oil into rivers that flow into Lake Michigan. The oil coated animals, killed fish and caused public health fears about water and air contamination. Enbridge Energy, which owns the Michigan pipeline, had another spill near Romeoville, Ill., in September.

Iowa's worst pipeline accident in recent years was in 1994 at Buzz's Bar in Waterloo. A half-inch plastic gas line connected to a steel pipeline ruptured, causing a blast that killed six people, injured one and caused $250,000 damage. The NTSB ruled the cause was brittle plastic and stress on the pipeline caused by soil settlement.

Maps hard to use, vague

Gas and liquid pipelines snake across the American landscape, tunneling under rivers, highways and parking lots. In most places, there is an easement of 50 to 100 feet for utility access and to limit external damage.

It's hard, though, for the public to tell exactly where the transmission pipelines run. The federal government's online maps are intentionally vague because of security concerns since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“We only allow government officials to have access to a lot of pertinent details about pipelines,” said Damon Hill, a spokesman for the pipeline and hazardous materials administration.

The average user easily can access county and city maps of transmission pipelines, but to get a neighborhood view with more street names, you need an expert.

Rebecca Craven, program director for the Pipeline Safety Trust, a watchdog group in Bellingham, Wash., occasionally helps people find ways to zoom in on the federal maps.

“It seems to be intentionally not user-friendly,” Craven said.

Diane Lilleg, 60, of Iowa City, has lived within 200 feet of two gas transmission lines for 20 years without knowing about them.

“It's awfully close to where I live,” Lilleg said, looking at the yellow posts that run behind the Pheasant Ridge Apartments, which provide federally subsidized housing for low- to moderate-income residents.

The Pheasant Ridge Neighborhood Center, about 100 feet from the pipeline, is an activity hub that serves a large number of immigrant families.

“I don't know if it's really a severe threat or not,” Lilleg said of the transmission lines. “It's possible that there could be an explosion that close to the center.”

The lines haven't caused any problems, though, which comforts most residents.

“Ever since we've lived here, there's always been a pipeline,” said Don Hartvigsen, 80, who has lived on 13th Avenue in Coralville for 48 years. “We don't think about it anymore.”

Schools near pipelines of concern

The transmission lines that run through Lilleg's neighborhood continue north into Coralville, where they pass under S.T. Morrison Park and the soccer fields beside Northwest Junior High School. A transmission line for petroleum products crosses east-west on these same school grounds, bisecting Northwest and Kirkwood Elementary School.

Paul Schultz, physical plant director for the Iowa City Community School District, said he has blueprints of the schools - Kirkwood opened in 1964 and Northwest in 1972 - but is not aware of any documents showing concerns about the pipelines's proximity. The lines were laid in 1954 and 1964.

Fears about pipelines have grown nationally in the past year. The Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District in Baytown, Texas, east of Houston, voted in March to close an elementary school that is near two aging pipeline corridors.

Bellingham, Wash., which had a 1999 pipeline explosion that killed three children, now requires schools, hospitals and jails to be built at least 500 feet from pipelines.

Pipeline routes not advertised

Most utility companies send letters or brochures to people who live near pipelines, but Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, said the publications tend to gloss over the risks of explosions.

“The headline should read, ‘Every other day in this country, there is a pipeline incident, and every eight days, someone ends up dead or in the hospital,' ” Weimer said.

The publications rarely show residents exactly where the transmission lines run.

Most brochures focus on reminding people that the law requires landowners to call 48 hours before digging on their properties, so utility companies can mark power lines, telephone lines and pipelines.

MidAmerican Energy owns about 800 miles of transmission pipelines in Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota and Minnesota. The company's oldest active line in Iowa dates to 1936, and the newest was installed in 2010. Fifty-two of those miles run through cities, or “high-consequence areas.”

Federal law requires companies to do integrity inspections on urban pipelines every seven years for gas and every five years for oil.

“Pipelines outside of (high-consequence areas) are never required to have integrity-management-type tests, which we think is a bigger issue, especially in places such as Iowa,” Weimer said. “Ninety-three percent of natural-gas pipelines are outside of (high-consequence areas), so the thousands of people that live along those lines have no assurance that these important safety inspections will ever be used to protect them.”

Integrity inspections often involve running an electronic device called a “smart pig” through the pipeline to detect physical changes, such as wall thinning, nicks, corrosion or faulty welds.

MidAmerican does surface inspections at least once a year for all transmission pipelines - rural or urban. This means someone walks the pipeline route, testing for gas leaks and looking for ground changes. The company also tests shut-off valves annually.

“If you don't take care of your pipelines, you have a lot of economic risk there of problems or liability,” Padley said. “Safety is our top priority.”

MidAmerican completed a $9 million integrity inspection of the 52 miles of city pipelines in 2010. The company found “no deficiencies that required corrective action or immediate repair,” spokeswoman Tina Potthoff said.

The Gazette could not verify the findings, because the Iowa Utilities Board has not yet reviewed the company's reports.

The Iowa Utilities Board audits inspection reports and issues probable violations for potential problems. The company has time to fix the problem before the agency levies fines. The board has not fined MidAmerican in recent decades.

Oil pipeline operators are monitored by the federal government.

Magellan Midstream Partners transports petroleum products through two pipelines that run east and west through Coralville. The company also owns aboveground storage tanks along Interstate 80 in Coralville.

“We're almost like a toll road,” said Bruce Heine, a spokesman for the Oklahoma-based company. “We put product in in Texas or Oklahoma or Kansas, and the longer it's in our pipeline, the higher the toll.”

Magellan's transmission lines through Johnson County are 8- and 12-inches wide, made of carbon steel and buried three to five feet underground, Heine said.

The company has had no fines in the past five years related to Iowa pipelines. Oneok, which has a propane transmission line that runs through Iowa City and Coralville, has had no violations in the past five years.

Emergency planning sought

The Iowa City school district has emergency plans for fires, tornadoes and bomb threats, but nothing for leaks or explosions from pipelines that run through school property, facilities director Schultz said.

“We don't have a specific one for the gas line,” he said.

A 2010 report from the Pipelines and Informed Planning Alliance, a group of 150 stakeholders across the country, calls for schools and other buildings with large assembly areas to have specific emergency plans for pipeline incidents. The plans should include evacuation routes, meeting locations and plans for communicating with pipeline operators.

Several bills in Congress seek to improve pipeline safety. The leading bill, proposed by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., would require automatic or remote-controlled shut-off valves on new transmission pipelines, would consider expanding integrity inspections and would increase penalties for violators of pipeline regulations, among other provisions.

The American Gas Association supports the use of remote-controlled shut-off valves in new lines, but said it can be impossible to retrofit pipelines in urban areas where there is little underground space.

Association of Oil Pipelines President Andy Black said reforms should focus on excavators, who have caused many of the serious pipeline accidents.