After a gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno that devastated a neighbor, PG&E is refusing to give out the locations of its riskiest gas lines out of concerns for safety and security. -db
The Bay Citizen
September 15, 2010
By Zusha Elinson, Jennifer Gollan
PG&E’s deadly explosion in San Bruno last week laid bare the hazards of California’s aging gas pipelines, but details on the company’s gas network remain cloaked in secrecy, raising questions from First Amendment advocates.
The company this week refused to release the locations of its riskiest gas-transmission pipelines, citing security concerns. The company also declined to provide a list of these pipelines, though it would not say why.
“For safety and security reasons, we don’t disclose that information,” said PG&E spokeswoman Tamar Sarkissian. “This is very specific information. We are a very transparent company.”
Asked whether the Department of Homeland Security had issued a specific directive to the company regarding the release of public records, Sarkissian promised to look into it.
For their part, federal officials say they had issued no such directive.
“TSA [The Transportation Security Administration] does not encourage utilities to keep the locations of gas pipelines that are a high-risk for failure from the public,” said Sari Koshetz, an agency spokeswoman.
The TSA, however, has discouraged utilities and pipeline companies from posting maps of their entire systems on the web “for obvious security reasons.”
As a private company, PG&E is not obliged to furnish records under the California Public Records Act. But First Amendment experts say PG&E has an obligation to make such relevant information available to the public.
“If PG&E knows about risky pipelines, why would they keep that secret?” said James Wheaton, senior counsel at the First Amendment Project, a nonprofit law firm in Oakland. “If they keep it a secret and it blows up in their face, they will have a lot of explaining to do.”
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, some agencies overreach by invoking amorphous “homeland security concerns” to obfuscate public records, Wheaton said.
Using a similar rationale, the California Energy Commission also refused to provide detailed maps showing specific coordinates of the state’s gas pipelines.
“We are not allowed to release GIS maps showing natural gas pipelines because of homeland security reasons,” said Jacque Gilbreath, a research program specialist at the commission.
But the commission does offer more than PG&E. More general print and electronic pipeline maps are provided upon request because “the public wouldn’t be able to go out there and dig them up,” Gilbreath said.
The California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates PG&E, claims not to have information on the utility’s 100 pipeline sections at high-risk of failure, a list that PG&E has said it maintains. But the CPUC says PG&E has provided at least some documents related to those risky pipelines.
The public can view general maps of pipelines on the National Pipeline Mapping System, run by the US Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
“Public agencies have a duty to protect the public,” Wheaton said, “but that doesn’t mean they should hide from the public every conceivable target that might be subject to some terrorism in the future.”
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