The Rindge Fire Department has four of them, Fitzwilliam has two, and Temple and Winchester each have one.
The devices — known as multi-gas detectors or meters — measure levels of combustible gas so firefighters can determine if an area affected by a natural gas or propane leak is safe. The equipment also scans for potentially deadly chemicals, such as carbon monoxide.
In these small, rural southwestern New Hampshire towns that don’t have natural gas distribution systems, the fire departments — some on call, others volunteer — can get by with the gas detectors they already have, their fire chiefs say.
But if the Northeast Energy Direct pipeline is built, that may change. The fire chiefs are concerned they may need more to protect their residents, particularly if a problem with the high-pressure, natural gas transmission line were to arise.
And with that, the question becomes who will pay for additional gas meters: the fire departments, whose annually operating budgets can be blown by repairs to a broken down fire truck or a hazardous waste event, or the North American energy company proposing the approximately $5.2 billion controversial project?
Gas meters are just one of other wider concerns area fire chiefs have about the pipeline.
At a meeting in Keene last month, fire chiefs and officers asked Kinder Morgan representatives a slew of questions, including who they should contact at the company in the event of a pipeline incident, how long it would take for that person to respond, the company’s plan for addressing various emergency scenarios, and what chemicals from the fracking process would be mixed with the natural gas?
“Basically, the answer is if something happens you report it, and someone from the company will be there within the hour,” Fitzwilliam Fire Chief Nancy W. Carney said. “That’s OK, but what happens until then? What do I tell residents living on the other side of the pipeline?”
Houston-based Kinder Morgan is the parent company of Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. LLC, which is developing the 419-mile interstate line slated to carry fracked natural gas from the shale fields in northern Pennsylvania to Dracut, Mass. Along the way, it’s proposed to pass through 18 communities in southern New Hampshire, including the Cheshire County towns of Fitzwilliam, Richmond, Rindge, Troy and Winchester.
“In reality, if we have a pipeline incident where there is an odor or someone sees discoloration in the ground from a leak, our main job will be to isolate the area, contain what we can contain and evacuate,” Rindge Fire Chief Rickard J. Donovan said Sunday.
But to do so, firefighters must know how much natural gas they’re dealing with and over how large an area, he said. His understanding, he said, is that the pipeline will have valves every five to seven miles that can be closed if there is a problem. But that would still leave a lot of area, households and businesses to cover with the department’s gas meters, he said.
He’d like to see Rindge get a couple more detectors if the pipeline goes through, but he doesn’t know if Kinder Morgan will provide them, he said.
There’s precedent for such a donation in Rindge. Following a suspected Freon leak at the town’s Market Basket in 2013, which sent nine employees to the hospital, the Massachusetts-based company bought the fire department equipment necessary to handle such a leak, Donovan said. Company officials viewed it as a way of protecting their interests and the community’s should such a leak happen again, he said.
“I hope Kinder Morgan feels the same way,” he said.
The gas meter the Winchester Fire Department uses must be calibrated annually, and that costs about $300 to $400, and puts the device out of service for about a month because it has to be sent out for the work, according to Winchester Fire Chief Barry Kellom.
If Kinder Morgan does purchase gas detectors for the fire departments, he’d like to see everyone get the same models, he said. That way, a firefighter from Winchester could operate the Richmond Fire Department’s gas meter if need be, he said.
But will Kinder Morgan provide the meters? The question was asked during the meeting in Keene last month with other area fire chiefs, three company representatives and N.H. State Fire Marshal J. William Degnan.
Carney, who attended the Feb. 3 meeting, said that the response the Kinder Morgan representatives provided indicated they’d have to find out the answer and get back to them.
Temple Deputy Fire Chief Matt L. Bruneau and Kellom, who also attended the meeting, agreed with Carney’s recollection.
“They definitely weren’t forthcoming in putting their name on the dotted line to support that,” Bruneau said.
He added that New Ipswich Fire Chief Meredith Lund asked the question.
Besides the pipeline, New Ipswich is slated to host a 41,000-horsepower compressor station, which would help transport natural gas and keep it properly pressurized.
Temple isn’t one of the pipeline towns, but it abuts New Ipswich. Temple Elementary School is roughly a quarter mile from the proposed compressor station.
Efforts to reach Lund over the weekend were unsuccessful.
When asked by email Thursday if the answer Kinder Morgan representatives provided at the meeting remained the company’s response, Northeast Energy Direct project spokesman Richard N. Wheatley didn’t reply directly to the question.
He said Tennessee Gas Pipeline has, and continues to address public and agency concerns.
“In addition to assessing future emergency responder training needs, Tennessee Gas has begun and will continue to discuss concerns such as manpower, equipment, security measures, and increase of presence patrols with local fire and police departments along the proposed Project route,” he said in the email.
Seeking answers
In October 2015, Carney submitted two, page-and-a-half lists of questions and comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission about public safety concerns she and other area fire chiefs have about the pipeline.At the time, the project was in the pre-filing process with the agency. It’s now in the filing process, with Tennessee Gas Pipeline officials asking the commission to approve their application by the fourth quarter of this year so they can begin construction in January 2017.
FERC is the sole agency that has the power to approve or deny the project.
In her letter, Carney asked about Kinder Morgan’s emergency response plan, both during and after the pipeline’s construction, when her fire department would receive a copy of those plans, and how would emergency responders be able to access roads crossed by the pipeline that only have one way in and out.
She also asked if the company would provide and pay for training and equipment for all first responders to handle potential pipeline emergencies, and what security monitoring would be done along the pipeline, according to the letter.
“There are still definitely more questions than answers,” Carney said last week.
As a fire chief, she needs to be prepared, and that includes identifying hazards and pre-planning for pipeline incidents, she said.
“It’s not my position to say whether I’m for or against the pipeline, but I have some concerns,” she said. “The hardest thing for me as fire chief is I want to pre-plan, but I’m not getting the information, or they keep changing it.”
Through the FERC process, some of the questions posed by area fire chiefs have gotten the attention of Tennessee Gas Pipeline officials, who responded to them and others in a filing with the federal agency on March 17.
In the document, FERC officials asked company representatives to address certain public safety concerns including local public services, such as police and fire departments, not having the manpower or equipment to respond to pipeline or compressor station emergencies.
In response, Project Management Specialist Samuel L. Johnson 2nd wrote that company officials had addressed the concerns throughout the pre-filing process, and would continue to discuss them during the application process.
“In the unlikely event of an incident, local emergency officials will be responsible for managing and protecting people (i.e., traffic control, handling injuries),” he wrote.
Wheatley said in his email Friday that Tennessee Gas Pipeline officials have begun to coordinate with first responders on how to handle a construction or gas pipeline emergency.
“Tennessee Gas has established and maintains liaison with fire, police, and public officials in areas where it currently operates and will establish liaison in those areas where it currently does not have facilities,” he said.
He added that company officials have participated in a collaborative effort with the N.H. State Fire Marshal “to proactively address questions by stakeholders” affected by the pipeline.
Degnan said last week that the Feb. 3 meeting was held because his office saw gaps in responses from communities outside of Keene during that city’s gas emergency in December 2015.
A power outage caused a propane-air distribution system owned by Liberty Utilities in Keene to malfunction, sending pure propane to customers with the potential for carbon monoxide to be release when burned.
The fire marshal’s office also used the meeting as an opportunity to provide some preliminary training to those departments about the Northeast Energy Direct pipeline, Degnan said, and he intends for there to be additional meetings and training that will go into more detail.
As for getting Kinder Morgan to pay for equipment such as gas meters, and getting the necessary information to pre-plan, it would be up to the communities to talk directly with the company, he said.
“We don’t have any role; if a fire chief calls us, we would assist them,” he said. “We don’t have the staffing to sufficiently get involved with every town on that side of it.”
The meeting in Keene, and another one that happened the next day in Hudson, focused on topics including how the pipeline and related infrastructure works, planning for emergencies, mutual aid response to a pipeline community, and future pipeline emergency and safety training should the project be approved, Wheatley said.
Officials from the New Hampshire towns along the proposed pipeline route and those that provide mutual aid to those communities were invited to attend the meetings, he said.
“Tennessee Gas will continue this communication effort with all towns along the Project route,” he said. “Safety is always paramount to Tennessee Gas and its parent company Kinder Morgan.”
Rindge Fire Chief Rick Donovan said he and other town officials have enough information to begin planning for the pipeline, but there are still some questions he doesn’t have answers to — including the exact location of the route — and he doesn’t expect he’ll have them until FERC approves the project.
“To be honest, I’d like to see the information as soon as possible like everybody else,” he said.
He’d especially like to see that information before construction starts, if the project is approved, he said.
“I don’t think that is unreasonable to ask.”
Kellom agreed, saying there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity yet to pre-plan for the pipeline, and he’d like to be prepared before the pipeline goes through, if it’s approved.
“We’ve never seen anything to this scale,” he said, noting that the biggest project his department has had to plan for to-date is an asphalt plan in town that runs on compressed natural gas brought in by truck.
Carney said access to training, the frequency of that training, and having the proper equipment, including the gas meters, are her top concerns.
Both she, one of her officers, and Donovan attended some pipeline incident training put on by the state last spring, and she expects more training for herself and other firefighters to follow, she said.
If there were a pipeline emergency in Fitzwilliam, there is no doubt her fire department would call in the surrounding communities to help, but she wonders how far out she would have to go, especially if she needed more gas meters, she said. And if another town along the route is facing a pipeline emergency at the same time, it would be worse in a situation where time is of the essence, she said.
There is rationale for her concern. Her department was one of 64 fire and emergency medical services agencies to respond to Keene to deal with a city-wide gas problem in December 2015.
Part of the reason why so many communities were called in, Carney said, was the city needed more gas meters.
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