The Government, in its unending quest for homeland security, has begun a program encouraging one in 24 Americans to snitch on his or her neighbors. The TIPS program – that’s short for Terrorism Information and Prevention System – is recruiting letter carriers and meter readers to snoop under your porch and in your basement. Some fun, huh?
The Bush administration also wants to repeal the 100-year-old prohibition on deploying the military within the nation’s borders. The White House has been vague on specifics, asking Congress to trust and go along.
All that homeland securing keeps the executive branch busy and a thing or two is bound to slip through the cracks. One such thing is pipeline safety.
There are 2.2 million miles of oil pipelines in the U.S., enough to circle the Earth 88 times. There’s a separate system for natural gas. The Office of Pipeline Safety, or OPS, a division of the Department of Transportation, is in charge of them all. OPS is one of the smallest agencies in the federal government. Fifty-six inspectors monitor 2.2 million miles of pipeline – that’s one inspector for every 40,000 miles of pipe, and that’s just oil. The Office of Pipeline Safety doesn’t know where half the natural gas pipelines are. Just so things run smoothly, pipeline inspectors notify pipeline operators before they show up to make inspections and OPS agreed to an industry plan to slash spending on environmental safeguards. Did I mention one quarter of America’s pipelines are almost 100 years old?
Pipelines carry hundreds of billions of gallons of inflammable liquids and gases all over the country, so you’d think they’d be tempting targets for terrorists. On the other hand, if terrorists attacked a pipeline, who could tell? A hostile terrorist would have to exert strenuous effort to outdo the damage caused by the negligent pipeline operators and the lapdog feds who monitor them.
Consider:
On April 1, 2001 a Dome Pipeline Corporation line near Bottineau, North Dakota erupted into flame and over a million gallons of gasoline burned before the pipeline was shut down. The cause of the rupture was listed as frost, melting at uneven rates on the pipeline. That’s right, frost, the stuff you can scrape off your windshield with a credit card, ruptured a gasoline pipeline.
In July 2000 the Office of Pipeline Safety found “no out-of-compliance deficiencies” in a 50-year-old El Paso Energy natural gas pipeline near Carlsbad, New Mexico. Less than a month later, it exploded, killing 12 campers, five of them children. It left a crater 86 feet long, 45 feet wide and 20 feet deep.
In February 2000, 191,000 gallons of crude oil fouled the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge near Philadelphia. The 50-year-old Sun Oil line had never been inspected because the Office of Pipeline Safety didn’t know it existed.
In 1998, the OPS did fault the Olympic Pipeline Company for deficiencies in a pipeline running through a residential neighborhood in Bellingham, Washington. Unfortunately, Olympic Pipeline was not forced to remedy the situation and a quarter million gallons of gas burst into flame the following June, killing two ten-year-old boys and an 18-year-old man.
In March 1994, eight apartment buildings were leveled in Edison, New Jersey when a natural gas pipeline rupture caused $25 million in damage and produced a fireball visible from three states. Then-Governor Christie Whitman said the scene looked like “ground zero after a nuclear blast.”
Here’s a good one – in 1989, a Calnev Pipeline Company gasoline line exploded in San Bernardino, California killing two people and destroying 11 homes and 23 vehicles. The incident was listed in the Office of Pipeline Safety database as having caused “zero” damage. When a reporter spotted the error, an OPS official said the database could not be corrected without permission from the company that caused the explosion. I’m not making this up.
If George and Dick and Tom Ridge want to secure the homeland, there’s no better place than their old backyard.
In the Pipeline
The Government, in its unending quest for homeland security, has begun a program encouraging one in 24 Americans to snitch on his or her neighbors. The TIPS program – that’s short for Terrorism Information and Prevention System – is recruiting letter carriers and meter readers to snoop under your porch and in your basement. Some fun, huh?
The Bush administration also wants to repeal the 100-year-old prohibition on deploying the military within the nation’s borders. The White House has been vague on specifics, asking Congress to trust and go along.
All that homeland securing keeps the executive branch busy and a thing or two is bound to slip through the cracks. One such thing is pipeline safety.
There are 2.2 million miles of oil pipelines in the U.S., enough to circle the Earth 88 times. There’s a separate system for natural gas. The Office of Pipeline Safety, or OPS, a division of the Department of Transportation, is in charge of them all. OPS is one of the smallest agencies in the federal government. Fifty-six inspectors monitor 2.2 million miles of pipeline – that’s one inspector for every 40,000 miles of pipe, and that’s just oil. The Office of Pipeline Safety doesn’t know where half the natural gas pipelines are. Just so things run smoothly, pipeline inspectors notify pipeline operators before they show up to make inspections and OPS agreed to an industry plan to slash spending on environmental safeguards. Did I mention one quarter of America’s pipelines are almost 100 years old?
Pipelines carry hundreds of billions of gallons of inflammable liquids and gases all over the country, so you’d think they’d be tempting targets for terrorists. On the other hand, if terrorists attacked a pipeline, who could tell? A hostile terrorist would have to exert strenuous effort to outdo the damage caused by the negligent pipeline operators and the lapdog feds who monitor them.
Consider:
On April 1, 2001 a Dome Pipeline Corporation line near Bottineau, North Dakota erupted into flame and over a million gallons of gasoline burned before the pipeline was shut down. The cause of the rupture was listed as frost, melting at uneven rates on the pipeline. That’s right, frost, the stuff you can scrape off your windshield with a credit card, ruptured a gasoline pipeline.
In July 2000 the Office of Pipeline Safety found “no out-of-compliance deficiencies” in a 50-year-old El Paso Energy natural gas pipeline near Carlsbad, New Mexico. Less than a month later, it exploded, killing 12 campers, five of them children. It left a crater 86 feet long, 45 feet wide and 20 feet deep.
In February 2000, 191,000 gallons of crude oil fouled the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge near Philadelphia. The 50-year-old Sun Oil line had never been inspected because the Office of Pipeline Safety didn’t know it existed.
In 1998, the OPS did fault the Olympic Pipeline Company for deficiencies in a pipeline running through a residential neighborhood in Bellingham, Washington. Unfortunately, Olympic Pipeline was not forced to remedy the situation and a quarter million gallons of gas burst into flame the following June, killing two ten-year-old boys and an 18-year-old man.
In March 1994, eight apartment buildings were leveled in Edison, New Jersey when a natural gas pipeline rupture caused $25 million in damage and produced a fireball visible from three states. Then-Governor Christie Whitman said the scene looked like “ground zero after a nuclear blast.”
Here’s a good one – in 1989, a Calnev Pipeline Company gasoline line exploded in San Bernardino, California killing two people and destroying 11 homes and 23 vehicles. The incident was listed in the Office of Pipeline Safety database as having caused “zero” damage. When a reporter spotted the error, an OPS official said the database could not be corrected without permission from the company that caused the explosion. I’m not making this up.
If George and Dick and Tom Ridge want to secure the homeland, there’s no better place than their old backyard.