‘Like something you see in a movie': Trump cuts stir fears of more pipeline ruptures

The Guardian

3 days ago

On a clear February evening in 2020, a smell of rotten eggs started to waft over the small town of Satartia, Mississippi, followed by a green-tinged cloud. A load roar could be heard near the highway that passes the town.
Soon, nearby residents started to feel dizzy, some even passed out or lay on the ground shaking, unable to breathe. Cars, inexplicably, cut out, their drivers leaving them abandoned with the doors open on the highway.
'It was like something you see in a movie, like a zombie apocalypse,' said Jerry Briggs, a fire coordinator from nearby Warren county who was tasked with knocking on the doors of residents to get them to evacuate. Briggs and most of his colleagues were wearing breathing apparatus – one deputy who didn't do so almost collapsed and had to be carried away.
Unbeknown to residents and emergency responders, a pipeline carrying carbon dioxide near Satartia had ruptured and its contents were gushing out, robbing oxygen from people and internal combustion engines in cars alike.
'We had no idea what it was,' said Briggs, who moved towards the deafening noise of the pipeline leak with a colleague, their vehicle spluttering, when they saw a car containing three men, unconscious and barely breathing. 'We just piled them on top of each other and got them out because it's debatable if they survived if we waited,' said Briggs.
Ultimately, the men survived and were hospitalized along with around 45 other people. More than 200 people were evacuated. 'It was like we were all being smothered,' said Jack Willingham, director of emergency management in Yazoo county, where Satartia is situated. 'It was a pretty damn crazy day,'
The near-fatal disaster was a spur to Joe Biden's administration to, for the first time, create a rule demanding a high standard of safety for the transport of carbon dioxide, a small but growing ingredient of pipelines increasingly captured from drilling sites and power plants.
'There's been a lot of concern about safety among states that permit CO2 pipelines,' said Tristan Brown, who was acting administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration (PHMSA) until January. 'Stronger standards like the ones we drafted last year have the dual benefit of addressing permitting concerns while also improving safety for the public.'
But shortly before the new safety regulations were due to come into force early this year, Donald Trump's new administration swiftly killed them off. A crackdown on gas leaks from pipelines was also pared back. This was followed by an exodus of senior officials from PHMSA, which oversees millions of miles of US pipelines. Five top leaders, including the head of the office of pipeline safety, have departed amid Trump's push to shrink the federal workforce.
Broader staff cuts have hit the regulator, too, with PHMSA preparing for 612 employees in the coming year, down from 658 last year. There are currently 174 pipeline inspectors within this workforce, PHMSA said, which is 30% less than the number of inspectors Congress required it to have when authorizing the agency's budget in 2020.
These 174 inspectors have the task of scrutinizing 3.3 million miles of pipe across the US, or around 19,000 miles per inspector. The indiscriminate nature of cuts at PHMSA 'has real world consequences in terms of undermining the basic foundations of safety for the public,' Brown said.
'A lot of expertise has left and that is worrying,' said one departed PHSMA staffer. 'The attitude from Doge [the 'department of government efficiency'] was 'your job is meaningless, go and work in the private sector.' Many people have thought they can't go through this for four years.'
America has more miles of pipeline – carrying oil, propane, gas and other materials – than it does in federal highways and a federal regulator that was already overstretched. Brown said typically just one or two people have the responsibility of inspecting America's transported nuclear waste while a mere dozen staffers have to oversee more than 170 liquified natural gas plants.
Each state has its own pipeline regulatory system and inspectors, too, but PHMSA is responsible for writing and enforcing national standards and is often the one to prosecute violations by any of the 3,000 businesses that currently operate pipelines. However, enforcement actions have dropped steeply under the Trump administration, which has initiated just 40 new cases this year, compared to 197 in all of 2024.
'All of these things will contribute to an increase in failures,' said Bill Caram, executive director of the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust. 'A strong regulator helps prevent awful tragedies and I worry we could see increased incidents now. The drop in enforcement is very troubling.'
'Everyone at PHMSA is focused on safety, there's not a lot of fat to trim, so it's hard to imagine that any reduction in force won't impact its ability to fulfill its duties. I can't believe they were ever prepared to lose so many people at once.'
In some contexts, US pipelines can be viewed as very safe. A few dozen people are killed or injured each year from pipeline malfunctions but the alternatives to moving around vast quantities of toxic or flammable liquids and gases aren't risk-free.
Trains can come off their tracks and spill their loads, as seen in East Palestine, Ohio, while the death toll on American roads from accidents is typically about 40,000 people a year. 'There is some super duper bad stuff that happens on the interstates,' said Briggs.
Still, as Caram points out, there is a significant pipeline incident almost every day in the US, ranging from globs of oil spilling onto farmland to raging fireballs from ignited gas. Many of the pipelines snaking under Americans' feet are aging and need replacement, which can lead to failures. There has been a worrying uptick in deaths from pipeline accidents recently, too, with 30 people killed across 2023 and 2024, the most fatalities over a two-year period since 2010/11.
'This is not the time to look at deregulatory efforts, this is not time to look to save money and deregulate,' Caram said. 'The overall state of pipeline safety is really languishing with poor performance. We are not making good progress and we need stronger regulations.'
A PHSMA spokesman said the agency is 'laser-focused on its mission of protecting people and the environment while unleashing American energy safely' and is in the process of appointing 'well-qualified individuals' to fill the departed senior officials.
'PHMSA has initiated more pipeline-related rule making actions since the beginning of this administration than in the entire four years of the preceding administration,' the spokesman added. 'Each of these rule makings represents an opportunity for us to promote pipeline safety by modernizing our code and encouraging innovation and the use of new technology.'
The agency spokesman added that pipeline firm Denbury, now owned by Exxon, paid $2.8m in civil penalties for its regulatory violations in Satartia and agreed to take corrective actions. PHMSA also warned other operators to monitor the movement of earth and rock, to avoid a repeat of the Satartia incident where sodden soils shifted following days of rain and crunched into the pipeline, severing it.
The leak was only confirmed after an emergency responder called Denbury to ascertain what happened, more than 40 minutes after the rupture, according to the PHMSA investigation. Communications between the company and the emergency services has improved since, according to both Briggs and Willingham. Denbury was contacted for comment.
Today, Sartartia bears few visible scars. The pipeline is obscured from passing view by trees and blankets of kudzu, the invasive vine. The town's sleepy, tree-lined streets contains a micro town hall, as big as a tool shed, a couple of small churches, a single shuttered store. On a recent summer day a single person was outside, contentedly cutting the grass, as if that harrowing day in 2020 was a surreal dream.
'We will see how it goes with the changes, I hope it doesn't affect the safety we've worked so hard to get,' Willingham said of the cuts at PHMSA. 'We don't want a day like we had in Satartia again. In 35 years in emergency service I have seen some crazy stuff but that was a wild, wild day.'