A report from Maine Public Utilities Commission staff filed on Monday indicates Northern Utilities, under pressure of a full management audit, may take over its natural gas pipeline mapping and location services.

A spate of recent gas leaks, including the Oct. 1 explosion of a building in South Portland, a gas leak at a Cape Elizabeth home on Oct. 8 and two gas leaks on Speirs Street in Westbrook on Oct. 18 and 23, has led the commission to file against Northern Utilities the first three notices of probable violation of gas safety rules since 2000.

The commission is planning to conduct a full management audit of Northern Utilities to determine if there is a systemic problem causing the gas leaks. It is also working with the company to remedy three specific concerns regarding pipeline mapping and location, notice to homeowners of live pipelines on their property and the practice of paving over valve boxes, which connect to the gas lines and can be used to turn off the gas flow.

The staff report said Northern Utilities acknowledges that its system to map pipelines includes the use of trees and buildings as markers that can be lost over time. There is also the “existence of properties with gas pipes (live or abandoned) on them for which Northern has no records.”

“For several decades,” the report states, “Northern had a practice of cutting off and capping inactive services various distances from the main and disposing of the service cards. This has left live ‘stubs’ in public right of ways and on private property for which Northern has no records.”

The report confirms that the two “service stubs” on Speirs Street in Westbrook were not mapped.

After James Phelps of Phelps Excavating hit the second stub on on Oct. 23, a local man smoking a cigarette was arrested for failing to evacuate the area. Pehlps said the experience was nerve wracking, knowing that any moment something could ignite or a house could explode.

From 2003 to June 2007 – which does not include the Speirs Street incidents in October – three of the so-called “stubs” have been hit by excavators.

“It’s a cause of concern to the commission,” said Fred Bever, spokesman for the commission.

“Should the commission identify something that could be a larger problem, they would get the staff to look at it,” Bever said. He said public safety is of the utmost priority.

The pipes on Speirs Street in Westbrook were, according to the contracted excavator who hit them, very old and unmarked.

And that’s not unusual, according to Christopher Castaneda, a history professor at Sacramento State in California with a background in the history of natural gas pipelines. “A lot of pipe gets abandoned,” he said.

While it is unclear what the exact age of the pipes or reason for their abandonment on Speirs Street, Castaneda said the federal Natural Gas Act wasn’t passed until 1938, so any pipes laid before that were essentially unregulated.

Castaneda said Maine didn’t have much for natural gas until after World War II, but instead relied on coal gas, created from heating coal and capturing the gas it releases. A natural gas pipeline can often be a coal gas pipeline switched to natural gas distribution.

Mapping problems also led to the gas leak that blew apart a building on D Street in South Portland. The report found that the Northern Utilities’ record for the gas line was off by 4 feet.

Christi Zachman, who works at the office of attorney Charles Bean, located across the street from the D Street explosion, was away from the office for an appointment when the leak and blast occured, but she saw when she returned to the office that everything on her desk had been moved from the impact of the blast.

“It made us a little nervous for a while,” Zachman said. She said that, from her understanding, Northen Utilities responded to a call and then gave the all-clear. Not 30 minutes, later the house exploded. She said she’s not sure if she’ll believe what she’s been told about the safety of the gas lines.

Zachman noted that Bean lives on Oakhurst Street in Cape Elizabeth, and was also evacuated from his home on Oct. 1 when the 87 Oakhurst St. leak occurred.

On the other side of D Street, Alex Notis owns the Bridgeway Restaurant. He wasn’t on site when the blast occured either, but showed up just minutes later, before the police or fire department showed up. He said the scene was chaos, with gas workers running in every direction.

“It was just a freak accident,” he said. “Hopefully.”

“You can’t worry about it. You’d go crazy thinking about that all the time.”

Notis said he was concerned, however, that no one ever contacted him to check if there were unsafe gas levels in the basement of his restaurant. “We should have gotten a call,” he said.

He still wants to know exactly what happened, and if there is a cause for concern, but he hasn’t been given the details yet.

The incomplete investigation points to the 4-foot discrepancy between where the pipe was located and what the records showed. It also suggests the excavator’s attempts to stop the leak with a rag may have contributed to the gas seeping through the ground and into the house.

Northern Utilities contends that geospatial positioning systems, geospatial information systems and radar devices could assist the company in locating the pipelines. It has proposed that by bringing its locating services in-house, it could cut the locating error rate from 40 percent to 10 percent. Northern Utilities currently contracts with On Target Locating Co., a utilities location service based in Gardiner. On Target Locating uses Northern Utilities’ records to locate pipes.

Northern Utilities looked into radar devices five years ago, but the technology was deemed insufficient at the time. It is ready to research new technologies.

Addressing homeowner notification, the issue stemming from the incident in Cape Elizabeth, where a homeowner on Oakhurst Street caused a gas leak by removing piping that he did not believe contained gas, Northern Utilities is proposing to increase public awareness about gas lines through staff training, recorded messages for callers and public service advertisements.

The details of the Oakhurst Street incident are still being investigated. The homeowner said he contacted Northern Utilities before removing the piping. Northern Utilities contends that no one but licensed gas fitters can work on gas piping in a home, but a cursory look by the commission staff suggested that this may be untrue.

Northern Utilities plans to coordinate with municipalities, specifically Portland, about paving over valve boxes. The company said paving over the valve boxes is not a problem, though commission staff members are concerned that shutting off gas during an accident could be hampered by such a practice. The staff is continuing to investigate the issue.

Bever said concerns over what could be perceived to be a spike in gas leaks recently are not confirmed by the numbers. So far in 2007, there have been about 80 Northern Utilities gas leaks in Maine. In 2006 there were 138, and in 2005 there were 163.

Bever said several factors could contribute to the decrease of gas leaks over the last few years, including warmer winters that lessen frost damage, and a program that is replacing cast iron piping in Lewiston with PVC piping.

The commission’s staff report notes Northern Utilities’ acknowledgement of some potential gas safety issues specifically regarding mapping pipelines, but, Bever said, an agreement on fines has not been reached. The commission will continue to deliberate the issue.

Federal gas safety violations, as opposed to Dig Safe violations, can carry fines up to $100,000 per day, with a maximum fine per violation of $1 million. Dig Safe violations, unrelated to federal gas safety laws, impose much smaller fine. Dig Safe is a nonprofit communication network that assists contractors on locating utilities before excavation. It is required that all excavators contact Dig Safe before breaking ground.

In addition to the recent incidents in Westbrook, South Portland and Cape Elizabeth, the investigation is concerned about an over-pressurization event in Saco in April.

The commission is sending a letter to Northern Utilities to acknowledge what the company suggested it would do to address its concerns, though the commission has not filed orders.

Bever said the commission has not formed an opinion on whether there is a trend indicative of a systemic problem with Northern Utilities management, pending the management audit. The audit was ordered last month and will take some time to complete.

Northern Utilities has pointed out that the commission “has the company’s attention,” evidence by the fact they brought in high-level staff, including some from its parent company, NiSource, a Fortune 500 company based in Indiana.