By George Avalos
Bay Area News Group
SAN BRUNO >> During the months before a lethal explosion in San Bruno, PG&E was aware of “prevalent” threats to its gas pipeline system, and that top executives at PG&E regarded company engineers as “idiots” for raising concerns about the safety of gas pipes, according to internal company documents presented at the utility’s criminal trial on Friday.
The testimony appeared to bolster the U.S. government’s claims against the embattled utility that PG&E operated in a culture that placed profits ahead of safety.
PG&E also had to scramble to prepare for an audit of the safety of the company’s gas pipeline system in May of 2010, the testimony disclosed. William Manegold, a risk assessment supervisor with PG&E, warned that PG&E had so many problems with pressure spikes and missing records that the PUC audit might be greatly damaging to PG&E. Manegold warned that PG&E might get “slaughtered” like General George Custer as a result of the audit.
Four months after the PUC gave PG&E’s gas system a clean bill of health, Line 132 beneath San Bruno ruptured in a disastrous explosion that killed eight and demolished a residential area in September 2010.
Some weeks after the explosion, Manegold expressed regrets in an email about top-level PG&E management ignoring concerns about the safety of the gas system in the months prior to the blast. Manegold recalled telling Christopher Johns, president of the utility operations of PG&E, that the company should spend more replacing older pipelines.
“What I should have said was don’t assume that the people working on this stuff now are a bunch of idiots that should be ignored (as it seems to me has been done),” Manegold wrote in an email to a colleague at PG&E.
In April 2010, prior to the audit and only six months before the explosion, PG&E engineers warned that at least 84 miles involving 443 pipe segments had manufacturing threats and had also exceeded their maximum operating pressures.
“The threat is prevalent throughout the system,” PG&E engineers warned in documents presented at the trial Friday.
Hartley West, an assistant U.S. attorney who questioned Manegold on Friday, reminded the engineer of testimony he gave to a federal grand jury in February and May of 2013.
“Would you agree that lines exceeding maximum operating pressure was a problem at PG&E?” West asked Manegold. “Yes,” Manegold responded. “Would you agree 84 miles of threats is significant?” West asked. “Yes it is,” Manegold responded.
San Francisco-based PG&E faces 13 criminal counts in the case, including 12 allegations by prosecutors that it violated pipeline safety rules, and one charge that it obstructed an official investigation into the explosion.
PG&E made a series of “deliberate and illegal choices” — and subsequently covered up those decisions — actions that led to the explosion, federal prosecutors said earlier in their opening statements.
But defense attorneys countered in their opening statements that individual employees and executives at PG&E are not guilty of any criminal acts and did their “level best” to operate the system safely and efficiently.
PG&E has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. If convicted on every count, PG&E faces a fine of up to $562 million.