The Pipeline Safety Trust: Born from Tragedy, Driving Change in U.S. Pipeline Law
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Mike Sullivan, President, Utility Safety Partners
On a warm afternoon in Bellingham, Washington, on June 10, 1999, a 16-inch gasoline pipeline ruptured beneath Whatcom Falls Park. Roughly 237,000 gallons of fuel spilled into Whatcom Creek and ignited, sending a wall of flame down the green corridor through town. Three young people—18-year-old Liam Wood and 10-year-olds Wade King and Stephen Tsiorvas—were killed; the fire scorched over a mile of creek and shocked a community that had scarcely thought about the pipelines beneath its feet. The National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation later detailed a cascade of failures—from prior third-party construction damage to control-system problems—that culminated in the disaster.
From grief to a national watchdog
In the months and years that followed, families, local advocates, and city leaders refused to let the tragedy fade into a footnote. Out of litigation and criminal settlements related to the accident came a $4 million endowment used to establish a small, independent nonprofit in Bellingham: The Pipeline Safety Trust (PST). Its mission was simple but ambitious—be a durable public-interest watchdog for pipeline safety nationwide. PST’s own history recounts how the families of Liam Wood and Stephen Tsiorvas and the grassroots group SAFE Bellingham pressed for a permanent institution to demand transparency, technical rigor, and stronger oversight across the industry.
From its base in Bellingham, PST began building technical expertise and credibility—producing plain-language guides for local governments and the public, scrutinizing state and federal programs for transparency, and showing up in Washington, D.C., whenever Congress and regulators weighed changes to pipeline law.
Over the years, Carl and the PST’s leaders have been frequent witnesses at congressional hearings and regular commenters in federal rulemakings administered by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). And they have made a difference.
I attended the first PST Conference in New Orleans many years ago when I was working with Alliance Pipeline. And, as I mentioned to the PST’s former Executive Director, and now Advisor of Special Projects, Mr. Carl Weimer, who was my guest on the most recent episode of The Safety Moment podcast, “I had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable really fast!”
The PST conference was unlike any other I had attended for the simple fact that landowners and landowner groups were present. It wasn’t only industry folk. We were being challenged, held to account and scrutinized by the stakeholders whose land was encumbered by the pipelines we were responsible for. Yes, we had the legal authority to be there but the notion that we were guests on their land, and needed to maintain a relationship of trust, integrity and confidence with landowners, never escaped me. But their presence and active, meaningful engagement at the conference elevated our own and removed any hint of complacency my peers and I might have had.
The first big legislative shift: the 2002 Pipeline Safety Improvement Act
The Bellingham disaster—together with a 2000 gas pipeline explosion in Carlsbad, New Mexico—galvanized Congress to pass the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002 (PSIA). That law strengthened PHMSA’s enforcement tools, created new research and development programs focused on pipeline integrity, and, crucially, established “integrity management” requirements for operators to assess and reduce risks in populated “high-consequence areas.” While no single group can claim sole credit for major legislation, PST’s emergence ensured an organized, technically informed public voice was at the table pushing for tougher oversight and public accountability as these provisions took shape.
Keeping pressure on reauthorizations and rulemakings
Congress revisits pipeline safety statutes roughly every 4–5 years, and PST has used each reauthorization cycle to press for specific improvements:
- Public awareness and transparency. PST has long advocated for better public access to the National Pipeline Mapping System (NPMS) so communities and emergency responders know where transmission lines run. Access has expanded over time—NPMS now has a public map viewer—though PST continues to push for more detail and usability.
- Excess Flow Valves (EFVs). PST supported expanding requirements for EFVs—automatic devices that can limit gas flow if a service line is severed—beyond single-family homes. In 2016, PHMSA finalized a rule expanding EFV installation across more classes of new or replaced gas service lines, aligning with long-standing NTSB recommendations that advocates including PST had championed in testimony.
- Emergency order authority and stronger enforcement. In testimony, PST leaders urged Congress to give PHMSA the ability to issue swift, emergency orders to address imminent hazards—authority that lawmakers later provided to help the agency react quickly to industry-wide risks.
- State program accountability and damage prevention. PST has pressed for measurable public-awareness programs, stronger state damage-prevention enforcement, and better data to target risks, themes that have surfaced repeatedly in PHMSA policies and rulemakings over the past decade.
Recent gains: methane, gathering lines, and ongoing oversight
More recently, Congress passed the bipartisan PIPES Act of 2020, which strengthened PHMSA’s authority in several areas and directed the agency to tackle methane leak detection and repair across gas systems. PHMSA’s rulemaking to implement those mandates—covering transmission, distribution, and certain gathering pipelines—has moved forward, with PST submitting detailed comments and continuing to testify before Congress on areas needing attention. In parallel, PHMSA finalized long-delayed safety requirements for large swaths of gas gathering lines, a previously under-regulated category that advocates had urged regulators to address.
PST’s fingerprints are evident not just in statutes but in the ongoing, unglamorous work of making regulations clearer, stronger, and more enforceable—commenting on leak-detection rules, convening public forums, publishing transparency scorecards for state programs, and guiding local officials who must plan and respond where pipelines run.
A durable legacy—and work still to do
Twenty-five years after Bellingham, the Pipeline Safety Trust remains small but outsized and punching above its weight in influence: an independent, technically savvy counterweight that asks hard questions, pushes for data and transparency, and helps translate pipeline jargon for communities and lawmakers. The laws are stronger than they were in 1999, integrity management is embedded in federal policy, and public mapping and EFV protections have expanded—progress forged in part by persistent, evidence-based advocacy. Yet incidents continue to occur, and new frontiers—like carbon dioxide transport and hydrogen blending—pose fresh regulatory challenges that PST is already engaging in congressional testimony and comments.
Bellingham’s tragedy transformed private loss into public purpose. By converting settlement funds into a permanent endowment for an independent watchdog, the families and community helped create a national voice that has repeatedly made its way into statute books and the Federal Register. The Pipeline Safety Trust is proof that when communities stay engaged after disaster, they can change the rules—and save lives—far beyond their own backyard.
I hope you’ll download the latest episode of The Safety Moment and learn more about the PST, its origins, and the positive impact it has had on pipeline integrity and public safety. I also hope you’ll consider attending the 2025 Pipeline Safety Trust Conference in New Orleans, November 13 and 14, 2025. Of all the conferences I’ve attended and participated in over my career, it was the most unique and engaging – and not because of bravado or size but because of the real and raw content and mix of attendees.
