Natural Gas Leak Video & Story

(Video of story located at: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/23462283/detail.html)

 

In the middle of a state budget crisis, Team 5 Investigates found cities and towns all over Massachusetts spending millions of taxpayer dollars on a problem they’ll never be able to fix.

Natural gas leaks can kill trees by displacing oxygen in the soil and drying out their roots, NewsCenter 5′s Sean Kelly reported Thursday.

“We’ve detected thousands of leaks in the communities that we’re working in,” said Bob Ackley, co-founder of the Massachusetts Public Shade Tree Trust.

Streets Where Gas Leaks Damage Trees | Photos: Gas Leaks Killing Our Trees

Ackley spent 30 years working for gas companies, detecting leaks in underground gas lines. Now Ackley is working with cities and towns to help them identify leaks near dead and dying trees.

The trust also helps communities recover costs they spent on maintaining and replacing damaged trees. “Statewide, there could be somewhere between $15 billion-$30 billion in damages,” said Ackley.

So far in Massachusetts, the trust has audited nine different communities and documented an estimated $3,035,454 in damages.

The city of Quincy was one of the hardest hit municipalities, losing 390 trees costing an estimated $835,121.

One-hundred, fifty-five trees in Milton were affected by gas leaks, totaling $400,282 in estimated damages.

The town of Brookline claims it has suffered $1,062,053 in damages to its urban forests.

Tom Brady, the tree warden for the town of Brookline, is working with Ackley. “It’s frustrating because I have a situation I can’t control. We have to take out the trees, we have to remove them, replant them and start again.”

“Do you think taxpayers should be paying for that?” asked Kelly. “No, I do not,” answered Brady.

Attorney Jan Schlichtmann of “A Civil Action” fame agrees. He’s working with cities and towns to go after National Grid for damages. “The problem goes to the leaking system that has not been addressed by the industry.”

But so far, the trust hasn’t had much success, even though internal documents from 2008 obtained by Team 5 Investigates show National Grid acknowledges the link between gas leaks and tree damage, requiring its employees to report it.

“The only opportunity that we have now to engage the industry, if they won’t sit down with us, is to engage them in a lawsuit,” said Schlichtmann.

Executives at National Grid declined Team 5′s request for an interview.

In a written statement, the company said it believes the trust’s claims “are grossly exaggerated.”

National Grid also said “in the vast majority of cases, damage to trees is found to be caused by factors such as restricted root growth, disease, predatory insects, age, exposure to road salt, motor vehicle hits and other environmental factors.”

“It’s a very troubling trend when the utilities can choose profit over public safety and the only way to fix that is to compel them to actually get out there and fix these leaks,” said state Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead.

Ehrlich has introduced emergency legislation that would force gas companies to fix all leaks, including those within the root zones of trees within six months. “I think what I’ve come up with is a reasonable fix that will both protect the public and repair our aging infrastructure,” said Ehrlich.

Mark McDonald, the president of the New England Gas Workers Association, told Team 5 he hopes lawmakers act quickly on that legislation because right now there are approximately 25,000 leaks that gas companies know about but aren’t doing anything to fix.

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