This headline from the @LATimes isn't just blatantly false and misleading; it's also the result of

[BumRushDaShow]

53. The city of Philadlephia owns it's own (monopoly) gas company

Philadelphia Gas Works

PGW: Around Our City, Around the Clock

MISSION: Enhance the quality of life for all by delivering safe, reliable, and affordable energy in an environmentally responsible way.

Since February 10, 1836, when the first employees of the newly formed Gas Works lit forty-six lights along Second Street, PGW has been serving the fine people of Philadelphia 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Today PGW is the largest municipally owned gas utility in the country. We manage and maintain a system of over 6,000 miles of gas mains and service pipes that deliver an annual 78 billion cubic feet of safe, reliable natural gas to our 500,000 customers each year.

We, like the great city we serve, have a rich, dynamic history that is leading us into a promising, productive future. Check out our latest Annual Report.

In our city of 1.6 million people, PGW manages 6000 miles of pipe.

I remember reading this article about the "problem" when it was first published -

Philly’s miles of old, leaky gas mains: A potentially deadly, Earth-warming problem

Anna Orso
Apr. 16, 2015, 10:58 a.m.


Philadelphia is a city of old meets new, and Billy Penn will take a look at much of the old. We’re looking to take a deep dive into different facets of the city’s aging — and largely ailing — infrastructure in a new series. We’ll go over the history, the problems and what the city is doing to remedy the situation. Philly’s gas pipes are old and leaking — in fact, there’s a startling amount of potentially explosive stuff seeping into the ground in these parts. And there’s not much the city can do quickly to fix it.

The amount of pipes Philadelphia has that are made up of an antiquated material is higher than any other utility company in the country, and the city’s sometimes-100-year-old gas mains are springing upwards of 2,000 leaks per year. These leaks can cause explosions and are slowly pushing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming on a huge scale. And the city and the state simply don’t have enough money to quickly take care of it.

The Problem

Philadelphia’s leaky natural gas pipes are some of the worst in the nation, and much of that is due to this: More than half are made of cast iron and unprotected steel — materials utility companies stopped using for new pipes in the ’60s. According to an investigation by The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the feds urged states in the 1970s to replace cast iron pipes because they’re more prone to leakage and make up the vast majority of natural leaks across the country. The highest concentration of these pipes is right here in Philly, where half of the 3,000 miles of pipeline are cast-iron.

The Trib also reported that Philadelphia Gas Works reported 89 leaks per hundred miles of pipelines in 2013, which is somewhere around eight times the national average. These pipes that can be more than 100 years old in some cases can spring somewhere around 2,000 leaks a year, according to the Inquirer, and can eventually cause gas mains to rupture and blow up buildings or homes in the area.

https://billypenn.com/2015/04/16/phillys-miles-of-old-leaky-gas-mains-a-potentially-deadly-earth-warming-problem/

I say this as someone born and raised in a (natural) gas household (home heat, hot water heater, cooking, clothes dryer) and you'd have to pull my gas stove out of my cold dead hands...

BUT... that's the reality. OLD INFRASTRUCTURE.

Hell, this city is STILL pulling almost 200 year old tree trunk water mains out of the ground.