Friday, May 30, 2008

McKinney issues stop work order after second gas line strike

By Brett Ryder of McKinneyNews.net

Brett Ryder/McKinneyNews.net

MCKINNEY — Digging around in McKinney’s oldest district isn’t easy. In fact, it can be downright dangerous.

Thursday morning officials from the City of McKinney, Atmos Energy and RKM, a subcontractor employed by the city, met to develop a plan to offset the inherent dangers in fully updating East McKinney’s sewer, water, gas and road infrastructure.

Coming at the heels of a ferocious blast May 16 that sent three people to Parkland Memorial Hospital, a contracted road crew working on behalf of the city on Wednesday struck another gas line.

The crew was grating the 600 block of Seneca Blvd as part of the city’s East McKinney infrastructure update when at around 3:38 p.m. an auxiliary gas line was breached.

McKinney Fire Chief Mark Wallace said the event was highly unusual. Secondary gas lines, he said, are usually not stubbed out vertically in the middle of a roadway. Instead, they’re placed horizontally at the curb.

The result? The work crew had no way of knowing that as a road grader peeled off layer upon layer of earth in preparation for a new road surface, a gas line nipple lay waiting to be severed.

Even with the marking of gas lines before the infrastructure repairs began, working in a neighborhood more than 100 years old is tricky business.

“If you did an excavation over there somewhere, there’s no telling what you would find,” Wallace said. “They used to use buried hollowed out tree trunks to carry water back in 1848 when the city charter was established.”

Further complicating matters is the issue of record keeping – or lack thereof. Wallace said he wasn’t sure if there are any records – much less 100 percent accurate records – of the variety of utility lines that may or may not have been replaced in the area when the city was relatively young.

Old lines and pipes, if they were updated, were likely not unearthed and removed, Wallace said. They were simply replaced.

With a mishmash of active and inactive underground pipes distributed haphazardly and potentially unaccounted for, the chance of human error increases when roads are being replaced or widened.

“We have no idea of the age of the [breached gas] line,” Wallace said. “I would guess for some logical reason they must have put the tap on top instead of to the side.” Wallace said it was possible that when the gas line was originally stubbed, the road may not have existed.

After the second gas line strike Wednesday evening, the City initiated a stop work order on the 10 year infrastructure initiative that has seen millions of dollars funneled into the aging east side of town.

John Kessel, executive director of development services for McKinney, said before further work is done, the gas main in the area will be removed and replaced outside of the roadway in an effort to mitigate further line strikes. As a safety precaution, he said, the fire department will be on hand while the gas line work is being done.

Kessel said that the city plans to meet with citizens of the area in the next several days to help lessen the anxiety and concern that the two gas strikes may have caused.

“Basically, there’s probably concerns there that the city wouldn’t be aware of on its own,” Kessel said. “We want to hear all of those concerns and address them.”

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