Pipe replacement is an extraordinarily wasteful method of reducing leaks. The total cost for National Grid’s proposed four Grants of Location for pipeline replacement is $8.900,000. (That is an historical cost of $575 cost per foot for 15,510 feet of new pipelines.)

To put that in perspective, National Grid’s request for four pipe replacement projects is equivalent to half of the funding for the new Senior Center ($20,000,000).  

In contrast, the cost to fix a high volume (Significant Environmental Impact) methane leak would be $7,500. Therefore, the cost to fix all of Newton’s 444 unrepaired leaks would only cost $3.3 million. That would leave $5,600,000 that could provide electrification for 125 homes (at an estimated cost of $45,000 per home.)

 In 2023, National Grid spent $17,000,000 on pipe replacements and $200,000 on repairing leaks. And the leak repairs were much more effective in reducing methane emissions.

In spite of the enormous cost, pipe replacements didn’t prevent new leaks. In 2022, eight Grade 1 leaks appeared during the pipe replacement period, and three leaks were reported after replacement was complete.  In 2023, five leaks (various grades) appeared during the replacement period, and two leaks were reported after replacement was complete.

Comments on specific Grants of Locations (GOL)

• Centre Street, 4050 ft. Cost: $2.3 million to serve 50 homes that could be completely electrified for that cost. The stamped drawing set for Centre Street is incomplete so the public has not been able to review them. 

• Walnut Street, 3340 ft. Cost: $1.9 million to serve 43 buildings that could be completely electrified for that cost. 

• Washington Street,  4975 ft. Cost: $2.9 million to serve about 20 buildings. 

• Canterbury Road, 3145 ft. Cost: $1.8 million to serve 40 homes that could be completely electrified for that cost. National Grid proposes to replace a low pressure line with 22psi (pounds per square inch). This is an expansion of capacity. And what does National Grid intend to do for all the service lines that are served from the low pressure line?  The phased construction project would be very disruptive to the homeowners and require complex traffic detour plans.

Recommendation: Put National Grid’s request on hold. 

My name is Susan Tornhem, 120 Hyde Street, where we have lived for 50 years. I’m a member of Mothers Out Front and we have been working to get rid of gas leaks and gas for years now. We have personally been trying to reduce our use of fossil fuels. We recently bought a plug-in hybrid car, I do 90% of my cooking on a counter-top induction cooker, and I am researching induction stoves. We need to have the knob-and-tube electric service removed from our house so we can insulate and get mini-splits. 

We’d be directly affected by this project, which is a bad idea, as new gas pipes would extend gas infrastructure into the next generations, and fixing leaks is much more cost effective. 

Please deny this request.

Hi, my name is Alan Gordon and I live at 27A Floral Street, one of the streets that would be dug up to replace gas pipes.  Thank you for the opportunity to speak.  I am a strong advocate for getting us off fossil fuels as quickly as we can, reducing our use of fossil fuels in order to limit the impact that burning fossil fuels has on our climate and our health.

Personally I have been working for some time to reduce my own reliance on fossil fuels.  I started to drive an EV about a year and a half ago. I moved into a new house and I had the developer, before we moved in, replace the gas stove that they had installed with an induction range. I had somebody else replace the heat system. I have heat pumps. I still have gas hot water and a gas fireplace that we never use that the developer installed. In September, the solar panels on my roof were turned on. 

My next plan is to get out of the hot water but I haven’t done that yet. I’ve made these choices myself. They haven't been cheap. They’ve been expensive. But I think they are the right thing to do, for myself, for the environment, for my kids. I have four kids that are all in their twenties,  and, I hope, my future grandkids-to-be. But not just for me, I do this for you, your kids and your grandkids. I think it is important for all decisions. 

Before I finish I want to point out that I looked and there are no reported gas leaks on Floral St, and so I don’t know why these pipes are being replaced. I understand that there are those places like Councilor Gentile’s where leaks should be repaired not replaced, and that makes sense to me. 

In closing, I request that the City deny the Grant of Location and that the City and National Grid instead work to spend these funds on electrification like I did at my house, and that where necessary, existing gas pipes are repaired and not replaced.  Please make this choice not because it is easy, but because it is the right thing to do. 

National Grid gives a low priority to fixing leaks compared to installing these plastic pipes. "They just take your approval for granted, so please show them you are not at their service"

As someone who experienced the disruption of gas pipe replacement on my street and in my neighborhood a couple of years ago, I suggest that we also consider the costly damage to residential properties as gas pipes are replaced.  

After the installation of pipes that were connected by the utility to my home, we discovered damage to garden plantings in our yard and our sprinkler system.  Then, several attempts were made to eventually get replacements for the garden plantings and the sprinkler system repaired.  My elderly neighbor is still calling and sending documentation to the unresponsive utility to get reimbursed for the $500 bill she paid for the repair of her sprinkler system.

We can thank Peter Barrer for calculating the cost to ratepayers for the currently proposed GOL project to be close to $9 million dollars. 

Additionally, we can expect expenses to increase with damage that is likely to happen to garden plantings and sprinkler systems in the neighborhoods that are designated for gas pipe replacement on their streets.

My husband and I do not want toxic methane gas coming into our home. That is one reason why we use an induction cooktop for cooking, and we look forward to replacing our gas heating system with heat pumps for heating and cooling. Instead of billing ratepayers to replace gas pipes, it makes more sense to assist homeowners in reducing the expense of electrifying homes.

I’ve been thinking back to our recent visit with family in Florida during the hurricane and tornadoes when it was very upsetting to see the terrible devastation to homes and properties from these latest climate disasters. 

We need to consider the actual loss of lives, and significant costs from destruction to homes and other properties from climate disasters, while we consider the $9 million costs for pipe replacement and yard damage expenses.

I hope that Newton’s leaking gas pipes will be repaired as soon as possible, and that City Councilors can find a way to, at very least, stall the GOL decision with a goal of ending this reckless replacement of gas pipes.

My name is Ellen Fisher, I live at 26 Canterbury Road — part of the small group of streets in the 4th “grant of Location” or GOL. I’m told the cost of pipe replacements for my group of streets is about 1.8 million dollars.

My home now has excellent wall and attic insulation, we have solar panels, and in the past 5 years we’ve substantially transitioned away from gas —   we now have an electric car,  electric clothes dryer, electric hot water, and an induction stove. At this point the ONLY thing we still have running on gas is the home heat. It’s only costing us about $11 hundred per year. Yes we have a small, well-insulated  home, but many homes on these streets are similar to ours — we’re not outliers. 

Many of the homes in this small set of streets have also made significant transitions to electric. Many have heat pumps,  solar panels, and electric cars. These are what I can see from the outside as we walk. More transitions may be in their kitchens and laundry rooms.

1.8 million dollars for the 60 or so homes on this small set of streets —  represents roughly $30,000 per household. We’re a lucky little group of streets; the map of Newton gas leaks shows only 2 Leaks here, one is listed as negligible and the other as a minor leak. 1.8 million — 30,000 per home — could instead help to finish transitioning  many or all of these homes to electric. Or, at minimum, be better used to just — fix —  leaks — for a much larger swath of Newton.

I’m told these 4 Grant of locations represent 8.9 million in upgrades — which I have to assume is just a small part of what National Grid will propose over the next few years  just in Newton, let alone the rest of the state. It will pour massive funds into upgrading a system that needs to sunset. 

It has been hard to prepare for this meeting because of the short notice — I still don't know the proposed timing or length of time for this work. I’m told that the new pipes will be rated for a higher pressure than currently, and I don't yet know why anyone thinks higher pressure gas in the streets is a good idea. I’m told new front-of-home outdoor meters and pressure regulators may be needed, and I don’t know the ramifications of that — or what it will look like. It is hard to grasp that all this can be planned with little or no notification by National Grid, to the taxpayers and homeowners.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I live at 2396 Commonwealth Avenue in Auburndale. I have been a mechanical engineer working on energy efficiency and renewables for 45 years. 

I know that the state legislature is about to vote on legislation that would change the Gas Safety Enhancement Program to allow repairing and retiring as options to replacing pipes. It would also allow the DPU to require the gas company to evaluate the relative costs of repairing, replacing and retiring before they proceed with any work. Retiring would mean electrifying the buildings on the segments of concern. And I think it is about to be passed. 

So I asked myself, why would NGrid suddenly be wanting to right now replace piping in Walnut, Center, and Washington Streets, all  of which are major thoroughfares in Newton, just as this law is about to be passed? I would really suggest that the committee postpone the decision on this to see what happens in the legislation and what the DPU decides to do about whatever happens, so that we find out for sure what would it cost to repair the leaks in these areas. What would it cost if, as Ellen has said, $9 million is enough to do 300 homes at an average cost of $30,000 per home to do whole house heat pumps -- and that is before the incentives. So I really think that the committee should postpone a decision on this for those reasons. 

…

I do not think Councilor Gentile is a dinosaur. I’m really happy he is doing all those things in his family’s home. But that brings up the point that whoever pays the utility bill for that family home is not going to be paying toward amortization of ongoing pipe replacement. Who is going to be paying for that? Will it be the people who can’t afford to put in triple pane windows and heat pumps? Or will it end up being all of us taxpayers bailing out the investors in National Grid who have been promised a 60 year return on an investment that they are making now with our money?

Ellie Goldberg, 79 Elmore St. I have pipeline replacement projects going all around me, on Center Street and Comm Ave, on Ward Street…it has been quite a disruption. 

I’m a long time child health environmental advocate. I especially worry about safety and I usually mean breathing safety. And I’ve known since the 1980s that gas stoves were an indoor air polluter and therefore I’ve never had gas in my home, especially because I have a child with asthma. 

I don’t think that we have the same definition of safety as National Grid so I want to make sure that we are aware of how many leaks all of these projects have been designed to fix, especially the significant environmental leaks, the super gushers, some of which have been leaking for years.  How many of those are considered a safety risk?

And I wonder how many households have actually had the problem of water intrusion in Newton that NG is so concerned about. 

And I also want to clarify the definition of what a leak prone pipe is compared to leaky pipes. Peter has done an amazing analysis to show the ineffectiveness of the pipeline replacement projects in reducing emissions or making any significant reduction in the number of leaks. In fact, we keep getting more leaks. Luckily our state legislation is going to offer us the option of retiring the pipes which Mothers Out Front first presented to the city councilors eight years ago. So we aren’t talking about doing something that we want to see happen overnight. We do want to see a transition. And we have been asking for it for eight years and we think we have given people enough imagination and enough suggestions that we should have been starting on this a long time ago. And the signs are only getting more urgent that this is something that we have to pay attention to now. 

So I would hope that you would consider a city wide plan but not just at the periphery. There are whole streets of people who are switching to electric stoves, to electric cars, and to solar panels.  So I’m sure that there are a lot more electrification zones and neighborhoods that would be willing, especially if we could take some of that money that National Grid would divert to pipeline replacements, and actually electrify whole streets, whole neighborhoods, and then we really would be safer. We wouldn’t have the outdoor pollution, we wouldn’t have so many co-located high voltage electric lines with high volume gas leaks. Remember the April Walnut st explosion a year and a half ago where there was a paved over high volume leak? Many of our streets are paved over leaks. Every time I go to the library I see a patch on Homer street almost every 6 feet if not 12 feet. It is a very ugly disruptive polluting fossil fuel system. And it's been long overdue that we really plan to retire it. 

And if we added the federal subsidies for fossil fuels the cost to us as taxpayers as well as ratepayers is much much much higher. It is time to turn it off. It is time to plan for the strategic retirement and to really identify the high risk areas that are prioritized for advanced leak repair and then we would really all be safer. Thank you.