Some Cold Facts About a Hot Topic

The subject of natural gas pipeline safety has become rather heated lately with various local bloggers posting scary pictures that would seem to indicate that our fair city is about to become a scene from Dante's Inferno. So let's leave the fear-mongering to others and like our old pal Sgt. Joe Friday deal with some facts, shall we?

The following facts come from the Office of Pipeline Safety, a part of the federal Department of Transportation:

The Lone Star State has about 198,708 miles of natural gas transmission, distribution and gathering pipelines. To put that in perspective, that is enough gas pipe to circle the Earth almost eight times.

From 1997 to 2006, these pipelines caused injuries to 65 people in Texas which which required hospitalization. That's an average of about 7 injured people per year. For the same ten-year period there were a total of 17 deaths from pipelines, an average of a little less than 2 deaths per year. Now lets get the obligatory feel-good statement out of the way. Yes, it is tragic that those 17 people lost their lives and this is not meant to minimize the loss of life.

Now let's put that in perspective. During that same ten-year period, 36,480 Texans died in automobile accidents. If my math is correct, that's an average of 3,648 traffic deaths per year. Have you caught the flu bug that's been going around? On average, about 3,550 Texans die every year from the flu and pneumonia. Own a pool? The Centers for Disease Control reports that on average 379 people in Texas accidentally drown each year.

Some bloggers insist that the city should ban natural gas pipelines in order to insure our "safety". But using that logic the city could make us even safer by banning swimming pools. Yes, on rare occasions natural gas pipelines are ruptured. When that happens it makes for some compelling pictures. But scary pictures are not the same as cold, hard facts. The facts show that transporting natural gas underground is safe.

I'll have more later.