Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new construction

Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by inferiorhuman on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @01:31AM (#35610304)

  Natural gas is underground and virtually never has an outage.

What? I mean the obvious response is to point out that time that PG&E used natural gas to blow up a San Bruno neighborhood. After the explosion we found out that PG&E actually had no idea how much they could pressurize their pipeline (and in fact they falsified records to cover this up).

I'm just gonna throw it out there, PG&E turns off gas service when there's a leak… causing… you know… an outage.

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pge-safety-investigat...

Beyond that leaks happen all the time, and explosions happen from time to time.

Oakland City Hall evacuated due to gas leak. 2014. https://w3.calema.ca.gov/mail/OperationsPortal.nsf/89f857187...

Car crash causes Oakland gas leak. 2021. I've had similar experiences with cars vs electricity too. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/08/14/oakland-street-evacua...

Oakland gas explosion. 2010. https://6abc.com/archive/7828878/

Natural gas power plant explosion in Hayward. 2021. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...

Gas explosion, three alarm fire. San Francisco. 2019 https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-gas-...

Gas explosion and fire. Daly City, 2023. https://abc7news.com/daly-city-gas-line-fire-evacuations-lea...

Gas leak, evacuations. Sausalito 2022. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/fire-units-respond-to-na...

Gas leak, evacuations. Antioch, 2023. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/gas-leak-in-antioc...

Gas leak, evacuations. San Francisco, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/evacuations-shelte...

Gas leak, evacuations. Menlo Park, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/crash-menlo-park-s...

Gas leak, evacuations. Corte Madera, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/corte-madera-gas-l...

Ruptured gas line, evacuations. San Francisco, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/ruptured-gas-line-...

Gas leak, shelter-in-place. Emeryville, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/emeryville-gas-lea...

Gas leak, evacuations. Morgan Hill, 2021 https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/firefighters-at-sc...

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Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by refurb on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @01:53AM (#35610423)

None of those are broad interruptions of service?

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Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by inferiorhuman on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @01:58AM (#35610448)

Neither are the overwhelming majority of electrical outages. Then again firemen don't usually respond to electrical outages, and most electrical outages don't trigger evacuations, so there's that.

Besides the claim was "virtually never has an outage" not "virtually never has a widespread outage".

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Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by refurb on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @02:50AM (#35610773)

California has had rolling black outs the last few summers.

And im not talking the boonies. Im talking just outside San Francisco.

Gas is way more reliable than electricity in CA.

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Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by inferiorhuman on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @04:02AM (#35611267)

Oh if we're talking the rest of California… it's less of a service outage and more like a mass evacuation (8,000+ families). Then again I'd say regular leaks, fires, and explosions do not a reliable delivery system make.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-27/so-cal-g...

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Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by refurb on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @05:21AM (#35611701)

We’re not talking mass evacuation were talking outage.

But anyways, how many people died from the wildfires started by power lines?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/22/pge-power-l...

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Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by emodendroket on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @12:52PM (#35616535)

If you’re having a mass evacuation you can’t very well use your appliances. What’s the point of this nitpick?

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Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by refurb on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @08:50PM (#35622714)

I never brought up mass evacuations?

But just pointing out gas and electric both cause them?

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Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by inferiorhuman on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @09:17PM (#35622989)

Not to the same degree they don't. Evacuations due to safety issues and service disruptions with gas are common. Evacuations due to safety issues with electrical service are not.

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Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by inferiorhuman on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @06:26PM (#35621291)

  But anyways, how many people died from the wildfires started by power lines?

Certainly fewer than succumb to natural gas related causes. Nationwide somewhere around 15 people die annually from pipeline related incidents, over 400 from carbon monoxide poisoning.

California's got a long history of safety problems with natural gas:

https://la.curbed.com/2016/3/8/11181374/gas-leaks-los-angele...

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Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by Zigurd on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @12:44PM (#35616416)

Another tragedy of the commons: Leaking gas infrastructure pollutes, causes explosion risks, and puts a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, and gas companies just have subscribers pay for the losses. Not that PG&E didn't socialize risk while privatizing profit regarding fires.

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Re:Court strikes down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new c... by emodendroket on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @02:05AM (#35610477)

This case in Massachusetts was also notable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrimack_Valley_gas_explosion...

> On September 13, 2018, excessive pressure in natural gas lines owned by Columbia Gas of Massachusetts caused a series of explosions and fires to occur in as many as 40 homes, with over 80 individual fires, in the towns of Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover, all within the Merrimack Valley, in Massachusetts, United States. One person, Leonel Rondon, was killed and 30,000 were forced to evacuate their homes immediately.

One thing I learned around this time is in Massachusetts a number of wooden lines are in service and nobody knows exactly where they all are.

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