After home destroyed, Johnstown couple seek better pipeline safety rules

Mark and Julie Nygren didn’t set out to be activists, but they are suggesting changes to the oversight of Colorado’s oil and gas pipelines based on their experience of losing their home and seeing part of their farm contaminated by a leaking gas line.

More than four years after discovery of the leak, the Nygrens are still renting a house in Johnstown, just north of their Weld County property, and remain embroiled in a lawsuit against DCP Midstream Operating Co., which owned the pipeline. As the Colorado Public Utilities Commission considers new pipeline-safety rules, the Nygrens want to share their hard-won insights with regulators.

“We’re farmers, we don’t want to be activists. But we also want our neighbors and our communities to be safe and we are concerned that not enough attention has been paid to our situation to correct it from happening to someone else,” Julie said in a recent interview.

Conor Farley, an administrative law judge at the PUC, heard recently from the public on a proposal to implement a 2021 law requiring the state to strengthen safety rules and adopt regulations to comply with federal requirements.

Several times during the threehour-plus hearing, speakers referred to the “Nygren rules.” e couple recommended changes to the draft rules based on events that required the digging of a pit on their land that was more than 20 feet deep and 3 acres wide to muck out the pollution.

“ e story of Mark and Julie Nygren serves as a poignant reminder of what is at stake in this rule-making. All Colorado residents, in urban and rural areas, deserve to feel safe in their homes and be protected from avoidable pipeline accidents,” said Rep. Tammy Story, a Conifer Democrat who sponsored the legislation mandating new regulations.

Story also requested an audit of the state’s Gas Pipeline Safety program. e 121-page report released June 12 was a blistering critique of the state’s oversight of natural gas pipelines. e state auditor’s o ce said the program repeatedly violated state and federal e problems cited in the audit included inadequate inspections to a lack of documented action against repeat o enders even following explosions that killed and injured people.

For now, the Nygrens hope the PUC will strengthen draft rules on using advanced technology to detect leaks and require the annual reporting of leaks. e state and the federal agency that oversees pipelines, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, require reports only when an incident kills or hospitalizes someone; causes property damage of more than $122,000; or unintentionally releases 3 million cubic feet of gas, enough to power 17,000 average households for a day. During the hearing, o cials from Boulder and Adams counties and Broom eld endorsed the Nygrens’ proposed amendments to the rules.

While the state considers new rules, PHMSA is going through its own

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