A day after natural gas explosions destroyed dozens of homes in the eastern part of the state, a western Massachusetts legislator is calling for an investigation into Columbia Gas operations, including creation of a plan to fix hundreds of gas leaks throughout the state.
“There needs to be resolution, and communities need to be assured that these issues are being dealt with,” state Sen. Eric P. Lesser, D-Longmeadow, said Friday. “We need to make sure this does not happen again.”
Lesser called on the Department of Public Utilities to conduct a statewide investigation of Columbia Gas, including “an immediate plan for fixing the hundreds of gas leaks already known and identified across our Commonwealth.” Many of those leaks are in Valley communities such as Northampton, Easthampton, Amherst and South Hadley.
“Gas leaks have been a known issue and Columbia has known about their aging infrastructure and leaking pipes for a long time,” Lesser said in an interview. “The DPU absolutely needs to get to the bottom of this and do a thorough investigation and Columbia has to fix the leaks. Enough is enough.”
Lesser is pushing for the probe in the wake of Thursday’s natural gas explosions that ignited dozens of homes in Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover. The explosions forced residents to evacuate for safety, and left one teenager dead and at least 20 injured.
On Friday evening, Gov. Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency in those communities and placed Eversource in charge of the recovery efforts after stating his dissatisfaction with how Columbia Gas, whose natural gas lines were responsible for the explosions, were managing the crisis.
At a news conference on Friday, Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera said, “since yesterday – since yesterday — when we first got word of this incident, the least informed and the last to act has been Columbia Gas. It just seemed like there’s no one in charge, like they’re in the weeds, and they’ve never seen this before.”
Baker’s declaration allowed the DPU to authorize Eversource to take over the effort to safely restore utility services, according to a statement by the governor’s spokesman Brendan Moss.
In the first public remarks by a Columbia Gas official, Steve Bryant, president of the Massachusetts branch of the company, “We are sorry … (and) deeply concerned about the inconvenience. This is the sort of thing a gas distribution company hopes never happens.”
Bryant declined to answer questions about the cause of the gas leaks, and said that federal investigators had taken over and would be the ones to speak on the incident, according to reporting by The Boston Globe.
Lesser said gas leaks have been a “known issue,” and called on Columbia to “step up and do the right thing and fix the leaks.” He cited an explosion that occurred on Worthington Street in Springfield in 2012 — where a building was flattened from such an explosion — as one example.
Lesser said there have been many groups in the local community “sounding alarms” on gas leaks. He called on Columbia Gas to halt construction of new projects until an investigation into the company is complete.
One such group that has called attention to the dangers of natural gas leaks is called “twodegrees@greenneighbors.earth,” which is made up of Northampton neighbors who formed the group in 2015.
On Thursday night, group member Marty Nathan was in the middle of writing a press release on behalf of an upcoming Climate Action NOW event — a forum discussing the group’s opposition to Columbia Gas’s expansion of its pipeline in the region — when she heard about the explosions.
When she learned gas was the cause, she said Friday, that made the Climate Action event “even more pertinent,” adding that, “This is part of the cost of fossil fuels and Columbia needs to pay that cost. These victims need to be safe and adequately housed.”
“We are calling for a full, thorough, and objective investigation because gas is dangerous, and no one has an answer for what happened,” Nathan said. “It really points out that the future is not gas, and it’s one more in a whole host of reasons for why that is not the direction to go in.”
Columbia Gas officials could not be reached for comment on Friday.
In the spring of 2016, Nathan and “twodegrees” sent a letter to Bryant demanding action on gas leaks that the group discovered in Northampton.
The nearly 16 households that make up the group discovered that there were 91 leaks in the city and, with the help of Climate Action NOW, they got Columbia to fix those leaks.
“Twodegrees and the Springfield Climate Action coalition had fought to get Columbia to identify and plug the major leaks because it was known that massive amounts of gas was leaking into the air, and Columbia didn’t do anything about those,” Nathan said.
According to Home Energy Efficiency Team, a Cambridge nonprofit that uses data submitted by utilities to map leaks across the state, there were 29 unrepaired leaks and 40 repaired leaks in Northampton in 2017; 30 unrepaired and 25 repaired leaks in Easthampton; two unrepaired and 12 repaired leaks in Amherst; 31 unrepaired and 45 repaired leaks in South Hadley.
In total, the nonprofit reported 15,829 unrepaired leaks and 11,902 repaired leaks in the state for 2017.
Both Lesser and Nathan expressed sympathies for the families in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover who were affected by the explosions.
“It is important to always keep in mind the families and the homes that were destroyed, they are important,” Lesser said. “It’s a tragedy and the first responders, police, firefighters and paramedics are the real heroes.”
Nathan said, “We are not there and can only imagine the horror and pain of the violence in neighborhoods where families should expect to be safe.”
Climate Action NOW’s forum, hosted by numerous organizations including Pioneer Valley Mothers Out Front and Staying Warm without Additional Pipelines, is on Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 7 p.m. at First Churches at 129 Main St., Northampton.
Luis Fieldman can be reached at lfieldman@gazettenet.com