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REGINA — About 250 property owners along a lake northwest of Regina are losing natural gas service due to continued ground movement and the risk of explosion.
SaskEnergy says that makes it unsafe, so as of Sept. 5, it will no longer provide natural gas to properties in six communities along Last Mountain Lake.
In December 2014, one home was destroyed and several others were damaged in Regina Beach when shifting ground caused a natural gas leak and explosion.
Spokesman Dave Burdeniuk says there is still too much ground movement to continue to provide gas safely to those areas.
The shutdown will affect 87 properties at Saskatchewan Beach, 76 in Regina Beach, 62 at Buena Vista, 12 at Craven, six at Shore Acres and four at Sundale.
SaskEnergy says underground leaks on its system in the affected zones have been repaired at rates up to 100 times the provincial average.
"It may not be that you see movement on your property or at your house, you may not see cracks or things moving. But deep underground where our gas lines are we're seeing movement damaging our gas lines and our ability to get gas safely to areas at the surface," Burdeniuk said Tuesday.
The 250 property owners represent about 16 per cent of SaskEnergy’s customer base in the area. Eighty per cent of property owners in the six communities are not affected.
Since the explosion in 2014, SaskEnergy has done a lot of work to try to prevent a similar incident. It installed more flexible components and has been using a satellite-monitoring service that sweeps over the area to identify more than 8,000 points on the gas line. It did remove gas service from 24 homes in Regina Beach after the explosion.
(CKRM, CJME)
The Canadian Press
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