BC’s “call before you dig” service is about to double its membership base, but at least one notable organization won’t be adding its name to that list – the City of Vancouver.
BC One Call is a Vancouver-based non-profit phone service that allows contractors and homeowners to access information about the cables, wires or pipes that are in the ground where they plan to dig.
The province’s new Oil and Gas Activities Act stipulates that all pipeline companies that operate in B.C. have one year to become members of BC One Call, adding their names to a membership list that includes Telus Corp. (TSX:T), Spectra Energy Corp. (NYSE:SE) and Terasen Gas, among others.
One Call spokesman Tony Roberts told Business in Vancouver the regulation will add 180 to 200 members to the service, which already has 170 across the province.
But noticeably absent from that list is Vancouver.
“A lot of the municipalities, especially the big ones, are reluctant,” Roberts said. “I have to break down those barriers and tell them that being a member of One Call is due diligence.”
He said the issue is that the city would have to tell One Call where every pipe, conduit or cable is located throughout the city.
Roberts said it’s a huge undertaking but a necessary part of One Call’s mapping system.
Peter Judd, Vancouver’s general manager of engineering services, said the city supports One Call and frequently uses the service to double check its maps with other utilities.
Yet Vancouver doesn’t want to become a member because that would mean contractors and homeowners would call One Call first.
“I think you can appreciate that when people are going to be digging on our streets we want them coming to us first,” Judd said.
But there’s also a money issue.
The cost of compiling all of the city’s infrastructure information and providing it to One Call would draw on city resources.
As well, members have to pay One Call a notification fee each time a contractor or homeowner requests information about a dig site where that member has infrastructure.
The notification fee is $3.25.
“It would cost our taxpayers money, so that’s why we haven’t done it in the past,” Judd said.
But Hugh Harden, vice-president of operations and engineering at Kinder Morgan Canada Inc., believes it can cost a lot not to be a member.
“We want to do everything possible to prevent other parties doing excavations near our pipelines from striking it because the consequence of someone hitting our pipeline is so big,” Harden said, who’s also a One Call director.
In 2007, a contractor punctured Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline in Burnaby causing a major oil spill.
Harden said the cleanup costs totalled $20 million and the incident resulted in a number of lawsuits.
Kinder Morgan was a member of One Call at the time, though Harden said the service worked fine.
The pipeline owner isn’t the only company that thinks One Call can save a lot of money.
In 2009, a construction crew in Kelowna damaged a Terasen Gas pipeline that interrupted service for 900 customers until repairs could be made.
The company said approximately 1,400 gas lines were damaged last year.
Terasen also said 99% of those incidents could have been prevented with a phone call.
Roberts said both the City of Calgary and the City of Edmonton are members of Alberta One-Call Corp., and Harden, who’s based in Calgary, can’t understand why Vancouver has yet to sign on.
“You’d think that an organization that owns so much infrastructure in such a heavily populated urban environment would want to do everything possible to protect its infrastructure,” Harden said. “The logic escapes me.”