Atmos Energy on Wednesday reiterated the natural gas grid in Dallas is safe, one month after three house explosions, the death of a 12-year old girl and the evacuation of more than 1000 homes in Northwest Dallas.
Atmos CEO Mike Haefner told the Dallas City Council the regulated monopoly plans to replace all of the aging cast-iron natural gas lines, installed in the 1930's & 1940's, over the next five years.
Haefner said the public utility will spend an additional $5-billion to complete the work by 2023.
That's a timeline several council members were uncomfortable with.
District 1 council member Scott Griggs said Atmos needs to find a way to speed up that proposed schedule.
“I want to see these old pipes replaced in Oak Cliff and parts of the aging city in the next year," Griggs said.
Griggs also took exception to Atmos' adherence to a theory proposed by a Carrollton consultant investigation that preliminarily concluded the leaks were caused by a confluence of geological forces and heavy rain.
"The longitudinal forces that were added to the system could not have been readily modeled, predicted, anticipated or forseen," the report from February 28 read.
Atmos ordered the 3-week planned outage of more than 1000 homes in Northwest Dallas the following day.
Atmos said it is still waiting on the complete report from Bryant Consultants, but the utility did not make the author of the report, John Bryant, available to answer questions.