Manx Gas has moved to allay a villager’s fears over the gas network running beneath Maine Road in Port Erin.
Sylvia Constantine wrote to Port Erin Commissioners saying it was imperative that the road was adopted to make safer the gas pipes below, which she claimed needed to be lined, and feared there was presently the ‘potential for disaster’.
However, Manx Gas said pipes don’t need to be lined and are laid low enough beneath the surface of Maine Road for there to be no supply risk.
Robert Gardner, customer and network services director, said: ‘There is not the “potential for disaster” in Port Erin. The adoption of the Maine Road is not an issue or a concern for Manx Gas and does not have any bearing on how the mains networks are operated.’
Mrs Constantine lives near Maine Road, where a massive gas explosion destroyed Jim Horan’s Maine Road house in January 2008.
She raised her concerns in a recent email to Port Erin Commissioners – concerns she had raised with Manx Gas before Christmas.
Her email followed information she had received that there was a leak in a section of pipe and gas had been smelt in the area, including by herself in Maine Road, near the promenade.
And her concerns were heightened by the unmade nature of the road, she wrote: ‘The surface [of Maine Road] must be putting additional pressure on pipe work when heavy vehicles hit the pot holes.’
She had been told natural gas had a corrosive effect on the substance used to seal pipe work joints, ‘so will create leaks’ and also that when the UK introduced natural gas, it replaced every foot of metal pipe work for safety reasons, ‘yet we have still got some very old pipes in Port Erin’, she said.
The local authority forwarded her email to the Department of Infrastructure.
But Manx Gas’ Robert Gardner responded this week, saying: ‘The medium pressure main in Maine Road was replaced in 2008 with a new P.E.(Polyethylene) main. Gas mains do not need to be lined after the introduction of natural gas. This has never been done and is not necessary.
‘Natural gas does not have a corrosive effect on the mains or the joints in mains.
‘When natural gas was introduced in the UK they did not replace all of the mains.’