Who regulates liquid petroleum pipelines in New York State?

(See below for 5/24 update)

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration – The New York State Public Service Commission.

According to their New York Pipeline Safety “Fact Sheet” – it’s the P.S.C.

But the P.S.C. may not know that. Or not think it important for anyone else to know it. One wants to be careful – when observing facts – to not carelessly draw inferences about intentions.

However, if you go to the Public Service Commission website

– and look hard – you’ll not find any obvious link – I couldn’t find any, obvious or other – to that body’s regulatory responsibility for pipelines. Must not be looking hard enough. It’s clear from the headings 0n the front page – Electric/Steam, Natural Gas, Telecommunications, and Water – that the PSC has some responsibility for underground infrastructure.

Popular Logistics – please pardon the pun – has been of late digging into local pipeline issues – and, to quote Consolidated Edison – “we’re on it.”

5/24 update after the fold

Update 5/24/07: After a single voicemail message to Gavin Nicoletta, the chief program manager for pipeline safety for the state Public Service Commission, I got a call back. Very quickly. In other states, this is called a “New York Minute.” Nicoletta is the kind of person that makes me feel good about paying taxes. And we talked about the risks associated with these pipelines, how they’re designed, what questions we have for him, and so on. My guess is we’ll have another, more informative conversation in the near future. Here’s some of what I learned (consistent with a Congressional Research Service report on pipeline safety that we’ll be discussing in an upcoming post):

  • The state’s authority over these pipelines dates back to 1994, and is, since they’re interstate pipelines, a delegation of federal authority.
  • Here are the state and municipalagencies that have direct or indirect interests in these pipelines, apart from consumer protection agencies which regulate pricing, etc.:
    • NYS Department of Environmental Conservation
    • New York City environmental authorities
    • New York City Fire Department
    • New York City Office of Emergency Management (which has an obvious stake in this; whether it’s part of their planning, we don’t know)
  • And with respect to the health issues (i.e. – if jet fuel were leaking into your garden, would that that be a good thing or a bad thing)?
    • OSHA
    • NYS Department of Health
    • NYC Department of Health

And I’m not sure that’s all of them.  And for the moment – we’re going to start with state and local agencies.

As to the NYS Public Service Commission website – this seems to be a design omission – serious and far from reassuring to citizens who want to know that their government acknowledges a particular responsibility.