Eversource Energy’s Yankees Gas subsidiary has agreed to pay a $200,000 fine for safety violations that occurred over the past decade, officials with the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority said Tuesday.
The violations detailed by PURA in the July notification letter to Yankee Gas included company officials improperly updating safety records, failing to inspect excavation activities near its natural gas distribution lines and failing to do atmospheric and gas leakage testing at required intervals. Other violations by the company included failing to do weekly patrols of high pressure after an excavation trip wire was found to be inoperable and failure to do leakage survey patrols within required intervals.
Company officials notified PURA in August that they wanted to have hearing held on PURA’s claims and one had been scheduled for Monday. But late last week, the company withdrew its request for the hearing and agreed to pay the fine, according to a PURA spokesman.
Tricia Modifica, an Eversource Energy spokeswoman, said the fine is related to required, routine inspections of natural gas customer meters inside homes and buildings within a prescribed timeframe. She added that the company was unable to gain access to those meters, despite repeated efforts.
“As a result, PURA fined us for failing to take additional measures – such as service disconnection – to encourage customers to provide access,” she said. “We support PURA’s goal to inspect inside meters and look forward to exploring other possible legal means to gain access and we’re pleased we were able to resolve this matter through a consent process with PURA.”
The two instances in which Yankee Gas’ distribution network was damaged by excavation work in Bristol and Killingly, according to the July letter that PURA officials sent to Yankee Gas officials regarding violations
Yankee Gas is required to perform frequent inspections of excavations with certain characteristics, such as when digging is done near high pressure lines, near cast iron lines, or in areas of high population density. PURA officials found that during calendar years 2021 and 2022, Yankee only performed three inspections in the Torrington-Waterbury area, eight inspections in the Killingly area, and seven inspections in East Windsor, “despite there being tens of thousands of excavation tickets in each of these area,” according to the regulatory agency’s violations’ notice.
The company is supposed to do atmospheric and gas leakage testing at least one time every three calendar years, “with the inspection interval not to exceed 39 months.” Yankee failed to perform the inspections for atmospheric corrosion and gas leakage at the required intervals 87,234 times during a period between 2016 through 2022, according to records the company provided.
Yankee Gas failed to do weekly patrols of high-pressure special conditions lines in multiple instances in western Connecticut during 2021 and 2022, PURA stated. One of the instances in which the weekly inspections were not conducted involved a manufacturing facility in New Milford in July 2021. Another instance in which the company failed to do weekly inspections involved Danbury Hospital in Dec, 2022.
PURA officials said a third example of this type of inspection not occurring on a weekly basis occurred at a Frito-Lay facility in the state. The snack maker has a factory in Killingly and several offices around the state, but PURA’s letter to Yankee Gas does not specify which Frito Lay facility workers for the utility failed to do weekly inspections during July 2022.
Yankee Gas also failed to perform gas leakage survey at required intervals on Quarry Road in Stamford and on Garden Place in Derby. In both cases, the period between leakage surveys exceeded the 39 month limit, which is the maximum amount of time that the company can go between leakage surveys.
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