Many years ago, two elderly women and one of their sons were burned up in their Donaldsonville home in a deadly natural gas explosion caused by a leaky pipe, Mayor Leroy Sullivan remembers.
After the tragedy, Sullivan promised to find a way to fix the city's century-old, leaking natural gas lines.
"I vowed then that if it was in my power, I would do everything that I could to make sure that it would never, ever happen again," he said.
For years, the city has has been replacing the brittle cast-iron lines with money from a loan and state government money. But the five-term mayor learned in two days this week that a big chunk of the remaining work has been funded through federal grants.
On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, awarded the city $4 million through community funds that each congressman has available for local needs. Carter represents the Donaldsonville area.
Another $10 million came on Thursday from the federal agency that regulates pipelines, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Mayor Leroy Sullivan, at podium, speaks Thursday, April 6, 2023, about the city’s struggled with leaking natural gas lines and a $10 million federal grant under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that Donaldsonville received to repair them. U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, who represents the Donaldsonville area, is sitting in the background.
Ascension's west bank city was among six small Louisiana communities and medium-sized cities and a parish awarded a combined $27.4 million on Thursday by the agency to fix dangerous, leaking gas lines that have worn out with age and waste costly fuel.
Other communities getting dollars are the following:
- Morgan City: $6.9 million
- Carencro: $3.45 million
- Alexandria: $3.3 million
- Woodworth: $2.1 million
- East Feliciana Parish: $825,576.
- Montpelier: $872,613
Michael Bradford, manager of the East Feliciana Parish's gas utility district No. 2, said his system of 100 miles of old, leaking plastic lines serves about 1,200 customers.
Though the longtime manager has the goal of completely fixing the system's problems before he retires, he said the new pipeline safety grant would allow him to make a critical fix.
"I got leaking pipes, and basically this check is enough to fix my worst road, my worst road I have, just to take care of it," Bradford said.
Morgan City officials said their grant would help them replace about four miles of old plastic pipes dating from the 1960s. The lines are what's left from an ongoing, long-term upgrade of their system's plastic and old copper lines serving around 12,000 customers.
Tristan Brown, acting administrator for the federal pipeline agency, said Louisiana received the most of any state in the nation from the first $200 million round of grants for pipeline safety.
The dollars are coming from President Joe Biden's 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The grants are the first time the federal government has offered infrastructure dollars through the pipeline safety agency, Brown added.
Brown said the grant program for small communities grew out of the agency's work with labor unions, environmental groups and Congress to determine what kind of spending could have the greatest impact on improving pipeline safety.
"Fixing old pipe that really, ... we see increased fatalities and increased serious injuries associated with the pipe that we're trying to replace," Brown said.
The old pipes can be cast iron, as Donaldsonville's are, or older plastic polyvinyl chloride pipes — or even ancient wooden ones. Brown said some of the oldest pipes date from the Civil War era.
"So, there's some really old stuff out there," he said.
The applications for the first round of money totaled $1.2 billion.
Carter and U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., supported the infrastructure law and both men, along other local officials, attended the award ceremony Thursday at Donaldsonville's Lemann Center.
Both men recalled Sullivan's years of pleas for help with the gas lines, which date from the 1920s, and emphasized the bipartisan nature of the legislation aimed at helping the state improve its infrastructure and compete for the future.
Cassidy took some criticism for breaking ranks a year and a half ago and helping negotiate the language of the bill, which was adopted on mostly party-line votes. Many in his party and in the rest of the Republican state delegation criticized the bill as wasteful, "socialist" federal spending financed with yet more debt.
More recently, Republicans have blamed that bill and other spending programs for fueling the recent sharp rise in inflation.
On Thursday, Cassidy said criticism for working for his state is criticism he would take any time because he knew Louisiana would do very well under the infrastructure bill. Thursday's ceremony is proof of that, he said.
He said his staff helped write the legislation and believes that intimate contact with the Biden administration and the bill's fine print helped steer dollars to the state.
"Some of the provisions don't say 'Louisiana,' but I'm very aware Louisiana was going to compete very well," he said. "I always smile when somebody says, 'Well, will Louisiana get as much as another state?' I think today shows we are.'"
The scale of Donaldsonville's pipeline problem has been daunting for the city's small budget.
One annual survey in fall 2017 had uncovered 141 leaks along nearly 18 miles of gas main in the business district alone.
City engineers have recently estimated the total cost at $36 million, even as the city is still paying back the loan for an earlier round of upgrades.
Sullivan said the combined $14 million in federal dollars from Carter and the pipeline agency would finance the next phase of improvements.
The infrastructure bill has set aside a total of $1 billion for pipeline work and has two more rounds of grant awards.
Sullivan said he plans to apply for more money in hopes of fulfilling his long ago commitment.
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