Opponents slam Weymouth natural gas compressor station after leak - Boston Herald

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Opponents of Enbridge’s controversial Weymouth natural gas compressor station said that Friday’s accidental leak of 265,000 cubic feet of gas only underscores their concerns about the station.

“Because that amount of gas was vented at ground level, where it could potentially be ignited by a spark or static electricity, the leak could have caused a fire or an explosion,” said Alice Arena of the Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station activist group. “Workers had to shut it down manually because right now there’s no functioning emergency shut-down system.”

In a letter to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, Brad Shamla, vice president of U.S. Operations for Enbridge, the company overseeing the station’s construction, said that at about 9 a.m. Friday, a gasket failed, causing gas to vent into the atmosphere at ground level.

“To avoid an unsafe environment for station personnel, the Emergency Shutdown System was manually triggered by onsite personnel,” Shamla said.

Enbridge is required to notify MassDEP within two hours of any accidental natural gas releases greater than 10,000 standard cubic feet.

Max Bergeron, a company spokesman, said in an email to the Herald on Saturday the estimated total volume of natural gas vented from the station was 265,000 standard cubic feet.

The station was undergoing testing and calibrating of piping and equipment when the accident occurred, Bergeron said.

“In order to maintain a safe worksite, personnel on site rapidly initiated the isolation and controlled venting of natural gas from the compressor station,” he said. “We notified state and local officials, and we are working to address the issue and are proceeding with safety as our priority.”

He did not respond to several questions from the Herald, including what specific steps are being taken to prevent a leak from happening again.

Arena also said that Enbridge should have notified residents of the leak directly, rather than just telling MassDEP, which she said partly was to blame.

“They are there to serve the corporations and not the public,” she said. “They are there to assist the companies they’re supposed to be policing.”

A MassDEP spokesman referred questions to Enbridge.

In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit scrapped the air permit for the compressor station and ordered MassDEP to conduct a new analysis of what would be the best available control technology to limit air pollution.

Enbridge began construction on the station in December — to the chagrin of many local residents and officials who have opposed it — and expects it will be done in the coming months, connecting two pipelines that will deliver natural gas to parts of northern New England and Canada.

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Opponents slam Weymouth natural gas compressor station after leak - Boston Herald
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