U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro wants Congress to find out why five people died in a natural gas plant explosion Sunday — and how America can build such plants more safely as it seeks to develop alternatives to oil energy.
To that end, DeLauro announced, the Education and Labor Committee will hold a hearing into the fatal explosion at Middletown’s almost-completed $1 billion-plus Kleen Energy plant.
DeLauro discussed the upcoming hearing Monday afternoon at an event at the Ninety-One Diner on New Haven’s Middletown Avenue, where she held an unrelated meeting with three dozen mayors, first selectmen and municipal staffers. (Click on the play arrow to watch highlights.)
DeLauro noted that Sunday’s explosion bears similarities to a blast last year at a ConAgra natural gas plant in North Carolina, which killed four workers. (Read about that here.) The Safety Board has sent a seven-person team to investigate the Middletown blast. In both cases the explosion apparently started when workers “purged” an underground gas pipleine of debris.
DeLauro, whose district includes Middletown, requested the explosion hearing along with fellow Connecticut U.S. Reps. John Larson and Joe Courtney. She said the labor committee’s chairman, U.S. Rep. George Miller of California, agreed to hold it.
The federal Chemical Safety Board made some safety recommendations for natural gas plants after investigating last year’s North Carolina explosion. DeLauro said that earlier investigation was “very slow going.”
“What we’re trying to do with this hearing is to accelerate the examination of these” accidents, she said. She noted that the country is looking to build more natural-gas plants and other alternative energy providers to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
“If we are going to move to these efforts — natural gas, energy efficiency — in the future,” DeLauro said, “We want to make sure there’s safety. So we want to move quickly on recommendations.”
Citing unnamed sources, the Hartford Courant reported Monday afternoon that investigators are looking into possible safety violations at the Middletown plant.
The Stimulus Rush
DeLauro was at the Ninety-One Diner on other business Monday afternoon. She spent an hour and a half filling in a crowd of municipal officials from her district on the flood of economic stimulus money still to come to the area. (She’s pictured above with West Haven Mayor John Picard and Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson.)
The feds will release an estimated $587 billion nationally in emergency infrastructure, education, and other short-term job-creation bucks in 2010, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to DeLauro.
DeLauro promised that her office will continue advising area mayors and first selectmen in her district on how to apply for that money. Much of that money is funneled through state governments, to the chagrin of mayors (and, DeLauro said, to members of Congress). Other money, municipalities can apply for directly.
She didn’t yet have an estimate of how much of that $587 billion will come to Connecticut. In 2009, she said, the Third District received a $607 million infusion from the stimulus plan.
“People say: ‘Why did you vote for $787 billion [in overall stimulus spending]?’” DeLauro said. “Because I believed it was necessary to get our economy back on its feet. It’s slow going. But I think it was the right thing to do. I stand by it. It puts people to work.”
Meanwhile, Governor M. Jodi Rell formed a panel to examine the cause of the blast. Release here.