February 8, 2010

In 1999, workers taking a boiler out of service at a power plant in Dearborn, Mich., mistakenly blew natural gas from the surrounding pipes into the boiler, where it built up, met with something hot and exploded. Six workers died and 38 were injured.

In 2007, two plumbers, in a process known as purging, pushed natural gas through new piping and into the interior of a hotel under construction in Cheyenne, Wyo. They did not smell the gas as it filled the room; it exploded, severely burning them both.

There had been several similar explosions in the intervening years. But there was no major regulatory change to directly address the central and repeated issue: where gas should be vented when it is being pushed through pipes during construction or maintenance.

Then, last June, gas being purged from a pipe at a beef jerky factory in Garner, N.C., filled a room and exploded, killing four workers and injuring 67.

That explosion led the federal Chemical Safety Board to consider changes to regulations governing where gas purged from pipes is directed and at what rate. The board, split over differences of opinion about how far its powers extended, did not approve the recommended changes until Thursday.

Just three days later, workers at a power plant under construction in Middletown, Conn., were purging gas through pipes when an explosion, apparently near the gas release point, killed five workers and shocked the surrounding area.

Investigators looking into the circumstances of the blast — a deadly disaster that wounded a community and dealt an enormous setback to what was to be one of the region’s most ambitious power projects in years — have barely begun their work.

But the purging of gas from pipes has been a common theme in at least seven serious industrial accidents since 1997, according to the Chemical Safety Board, and the board has been critical of the hodgepodge of local regulations that allow the procedure to be conducted dangerously.

Others have, too.

“I don’t know what else has to be done before this is stopped so that more workers aren’t killed,” said Tom O’Connor, coordinator of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, a nonprofit coalition of labor unions, health and technical professionals and others interested in workplace safety.

“It was a little mind boggling to me that the C.S.B. was still having to discuss whether they should issue these urgent recommendations,” he said. “Now, this is just like a huge exclamation point.”

The blast in Connecticut occurred in a “courtyard” area, where the gas purged from pipes was being ventilated, said S. Derek Phelps, the executive director of the Connecticut Siting Council, who was briefed by local authorities on the investigation. There is no information yet about what might have ignited the gas.

“The explosion happened outside of the building, we know that,” Mr. Phelps said. “That’s where the valves were that they were testing and doing the purging work.”

Mr. Phelps said purging the pipes is one of the final steps in the construction of power plants and is necessary because even the smallest particle left inside can damage pipes and equipment.

There are no federal regulations that govern the purging process. Three independent organizations — the National Fire Protection Association, the American Gas Association and the International Code Council — set standards that are adopted by many jurisdictions.

The standards set by those bodies allow for the gas to be purged into enclosed spaces, so long as “precautions are taken to perform this operation in a safe manner by ventilation of the space, control of purging rate, and elimination of all hazardous conditions.”

Contractors often rely on nothing more sophisticated than the human nose to tell them when gas is reaching dangerous levels, the safety board found. This is problematic for many reasons: Natural gas has no smell, other than an odorant that is infused into it; new piping decreases the impact of the odorant; and humans become acclimated to the smell the longer they are exposed to it.

In October, the Chemical Safety Board considered urgent recommendations for new regulations that gas be released outdoors, if at all possible, and monitored. If gas must be released indoors, the board suggested, it should require the approval of local authorities, with levels and ventilation closely monitored and all other personnel evacuated.

But two members of the board voted against the proposal, arguing that the outside groups were better qualified to address the details. One of the two members who opposed the recommendations has since departed and the proposal was adopted last week.

“Purging flammable gases into building interiors is a recipe for disaster,” Donald Holmstrom, chief investigator for the board, said last week.

A committee of the National Fire Protection Association will consider the recommendations later this month, a spokeswoman said.

Two members of Congress, Representatives David Price and Bob Etheridge, both Democrats of North Carolina, wrote a letter last week urging the association to adopt the recommendations.

The union representing workers at the beef jerky factory in North Carolina was disappointed at the safety board’s initial vote against the recommendations, said Jackie Nowell, director of occupational safety for the union. She said she hoped the stronger rules would be put into effect soon.

“Hopefully, whenever workers die, businesses are destroyed and livelihoods are affected, we learn from that and strengthen regulations so that just wasn’t another event,” she said.

February 8, 2010

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. — Their obituaries will call them pipe fitters, and they will not be wrong, but they certainly will not be exactly right. The work these men did went far beyond threading and brazing, welding and rigging — they were coaches and leaders, self-appointed statesmen of the cities where they lived. They were tradesman-citizen throwbacks who gave of their time after work the way they gave of their backs on the job.

The names of the five men who died in the tremendous natural gas explosion at Kleen Energy Systems plant on Sunday trickled to the public slowly at first, as if on purpose, so that each loss could be quietly tolled on its own. Look at Raymond Dobratz, running around like he was 29 again instead of exactly double that age, working 12-hour days and chasing five grandchildren in his off hours.

Look at Ronald J. Crabb, 42, who spent half his life with his pipe fitter union and who served on the Democratic Town Committee. His death was announced on Monday by a friend, Linda Orange, deputy speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives. There are probably places where pipe fitters do not know many state lawmakers, but the two worlds met in Mr. Crabb.

“I’m proud and lucky to say he was my friend,” Ms. Orange said at the Crabbs’ home in Colchester.

The names of the other three workers who were killed were released late Monday afternoon: Peter Chepulis of Thomaston, Conn.; Roy Rushton of Hamilton, Ontario; and Chris Walters of Florissant, Mo. Untold thousands heard the explosion in which they died.

Officials said they were investigating whether criminal negligence played a part in the blast. “We’ve ruled out an intentional act,” said Patrick McMahon, the acting police chief of Middletown. Federal investigations have also begun.

About 20 workers survived the explosion, which blew open the plant like buckshot would a doll’s house; the impact was felt from one end of Connecticut to the other.

“He died in the air,” said one of Mr. Dobratz’s three sons, Matthew, 31. His father had been airlifted from the site and was being flown to Harford Hospital when he stopped showing vital signs, he said.

The authorities said on Monday that they had accounted for all the workers at the 620-megawatt plant, which was under construction. It had been feared that as many as 100 or more workers were at the site of the explosion, but by Monday, that number had fallen to 25 in the immediate area.

“One of the guys said, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there to do anything. I took my kids to the monster truck show,’ ” Matthew Dobratz said.

The younger Mr. Dobratz had worked as a pipe fitter beside his father and one of his brothers, and he rushed to the scene on Sunday. He did not get too close to the destruction, but he got close enough. “All I can say is, it’s not pretty up there,” he said. “I saw what I needed to see.”

The brothers grew up beside their father on all manner of playing fields. Their father was one of the founders of the Old Saybrook Youth Football League in the 1980s.

“He started up a football league with a couple other guys so we could play football, and it’s still going today,” Mr. Dobratz said. “He coached soccer when we played soccer. Baseball when we played baseball.”

When his friends who were police officers asked the elder Mr. Dobratz, who was active in Local 777 of the plumbers’ and pipe fitters’ union, to represent them in one of the seven seats on the Old Saybrook Police Commission, he did that, too, winning and keeping a seat in town elections.

“His contributions to our community were great, and his terrible loss will be felt by many who had the privilege of knowing and working with him,” said Michael A. Spera, Old Saybrook’s police chief.

Of his father’s board seat, Matthew Dobratz said, “Actually, he didn’t care for it,” but his father could not say no. “A lot of the officers grew up in town and they knew him. He coached them.”

Likewise, Mr. Crabb held elected office. He served on Colchester’s Finance Board for six years, said Dawn LePage, a meeting clerk. His last term ended in November.

He and his wife, Jodi Thomas, were both very active in the last campaign cycle, Ms. LePage said. He put up and maintained posters for town board candidates along local roads.

“It was driving him crazy that they were all getting blown down,” Ms. LePage said. “So he’d get done with work and drive around putting them back up.”

Mr. Crabb’s combination of hats — one of them hard — was somewhat unusual.

“It sort of illustrates what he was,” said Ronald Goldstein, a lawyer who served with Mr. Crabb on the Finance Board and is chairman of the town’s Board of Education. “He was very thoughtful and deliberate and had a lot of passion for the town.”

“He was with the guys, if you will,” he said, “but also very much a leader and very capable in that political format.”

February 9, 2010

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Just over two years ago, Rajendra K. Pachauri seemed destined for a scientist’s version of sainthood: A vegetarian economist-engineer who leads the United Nations’ climate change panel, he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the panel, sharing the honor with former Vice President Al Gore.

But Dr. Pachauri and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are now under intense scrutiny, facing accusations of scientific sloppiness and potential financial conflicts of interest from climate skeptics, right-leaning politicians and even some mainstream scientists. Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, called for Dr. Pachauri’s resignation last week.

Critics, writing in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph and elsewhere, have accused Dr. Pachauri of profiting from his work as an adviser to businesses, including Deutsche Bank and Pegasus Capital Advisors, a New York investment firm — a claim he denies.

They have also unearthed and publicized problems with the intergovernmental panel’s landmark 2007 report on climate change, which concluded that the planet was warming and that humans were likely to blame.

The report, they contend, misrepresents the state of scientific knowledge about diverse topics — including the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers and the rise in severe storms — in a way that exaggerates the evidence for climate change.

With a global climate treaty under negotiation and legislation pending in the United States, the climate panel has found itself in the political cross hairs, its judgments provoking passions normally reserved for issues like abortion and guns. The panel is charged by the United Nations with reviewing research to create periodic reports on climate risks, documents that are often used by governments to guide decisions, and its every conclusion is being dissected under a microscope.

Several of the recent accusations have proved to be half-truths: While Dr. Pachauri does act as a paid consultant and adviser to many companies, he makes no money from these activities, he said. The payments go to the Energy and Resources Institute, the prestigious nonprofit research center based in Delhi that he founded in 1982 and still leads, where the money finances charitable projects like Lighting a Billion Lives, which provides solar lanterns in rural India.

“My conscience is clear,” Dr. Pachauri said in a lengthy telephone interview.

The panel, in reviewing complaints about possible errors in its report, has so far found that one was justified and another was “baseless.” The general consensus among mainstream scientists is that the errors are in any case minor and do not undermine the report’s conclusions.

Still, the escalating controversy has led even many of them to conclude that the Nobel-winning panel needs improved scientific standards as well as a policy about what kinds of other work its officers may pursue.

“When I look at Dr. Pachauri’s case I see obvious and egregious problems,” said Dr. Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist and professor of environmental science at the University of Colorado. He said that serving as an adviser to financial companies was inappropriate for the chairman of the United Nations’ panel, whether Dr. Pachauri received payment directly or not.

Dr. Pachauri bristles at the accusations, which he says are “lies” or “distortions” promulgated by groups hoping to undermine climate legislation and a treaty.

“These people want to distort the picture for their own ends,” Dr. Pachauri said, noting that the report was released two years ago and that the criticisms were only now coming into the limelight. “What we’re doing is not only above-board, but laudable,” he said. “These guys want me to resign, but I won’t.”

Dr. Pachauri, 69, said the only work income he received was a salary from the Energy and Resources Institute: about $49,000, according to his 2009 Indian tax return, which he provided to The New York Times. The return also lists $16,000 in other income, most of it interest on accounts in Indian banks.

Dr. Pachauri acknowledged his role as an adviser and consultant to businesses, but he said that it was his responsibility as the panel’s chairman to disseminate its findings to industry.

Nonetheless, Christopher Monckton, a leading climate skeptic, called the panel corrupt, adding: “The chair is an Indian railroad engineer with very substantial direct and indirect financial vested interests in the matters covered in the climate panel’s report. What on earth is he doing there?”

A former adviser to Margaret Thatcher who also assailed Dr. Pachauri in a critique in Copenhagen that has since been widely circulated, Lord Monckton is now the chief policy adviser to the Science and Public Policy Institute, a Washington-based research and education institute that states on its Web site: “Proved: There is no climate crisis.”

As the accusations have snowballed in the last six weeks, Dr. Pachauri remains widely admired for his work on the intergovernmental panel, which relies on the collaborative work of hundreds of volunteer scientists to sift through current scientific evidence for its reports. He has served in an elected, unpaid position as chairman of the panel, often known by its initials, I.P.C.C., since 2002.

“There is no evidence that outside interests affected Pachauri’s leadership of the I.P.C.C. at all,” said Hal Harvey, chief executive of ClimateWorks, a foundation based in San Francisco that focuses on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The panel’s process is so “robust and transparent” that it could not be undercut by “personalities or errors,” he said.

He added, “Anyone who is qualified to chair the I.P.C.C. will have interests in academics, science, politics or business; there are thousands of scientists on the I.P.C.C., and you need their expertise and they all have to come from somewhere.”

Many government panels in the United States tolerate overt conflicts of interest in order to get expert advice, Mr. Harvey said, noting that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase on its board.

But most scientific agencies have explicit conflict-of-interest policies to ensure that expert advice is impartial. The Food and Drug Administration, for example, asks doctors who serve on drug advisory panels to disclose payments from pharmaceutical companies and can disqualify those whose financial involvement is too great.

Dr. Pielke, the University of Colorado professor, said the United Nations panel, which has no explicit conflict policy, should do the same, adding, “You need to make sure that advice is advice and not stealth advocacy.”

Some critics have said that the intergovernmental panel’s chairman should be employed full time by the United Nations while in office, and should eschew outside commitments.

The accusations of errors in the panel’s report — most originating from two right-leaning British papers, The Sunday Telegraph and The Times of London — have sullied the group’s reputation. They follow a controversy that erupted late last year over e-mail messages and documents released without authorization from a climate research center in Britain.

In one case, the report included a sentence that said the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. The sentence was based on a decade-old interview with a glaciologist in a popular magazine; the scientist now says he was misquoted. The panel recently expressed “regret” for the error.

The panel was also criticized for citing a study about financial losses after extreme weather events that found an increase in such losses of 2 percent a year from 1970 to 2005. That study had not been peer reviewed at the time, although it was later on.

The panel has called the complaint “baseless,” noting that the study was cited appropriately and that other scientific data pointed to a recent rise in severe storms.

Lord Monckton said the incidents reflected a pattern of willful misrepresentation by scientists with financial and professional interests that render them unsuitable to give neutral advice.

In response to the recent criticisms, Dr. Pachauri provided an accounting of some of his outside consulting fees paid to the Energy and Resources Institute. Those include about $140,000 from Deutsche Bank, $25,000 from Credit Suisse, $80,000 from Toyota and $48,750 from Yale. He has recently begun work as a strategic adviser for Pegasus, the investment firm, but has not yet attended a meeting, and no money has yet been paid to the Energy and Resources Institute. He has also provided advice free of charge to groups like the Chicago Climate Exchange.

The energy institute has financial interests in a number of companies. For example, it was awarded stock by the founders of GloriOil, a start-up based in Houston, in exchange for permission to use a method developed at the institute to extract residual oil from older wells.

“We thought about it long and hard, and decided to get involved in this because the U.S. has the largest number of these wells and it is better than drilling offshore or in Alaska,” Dr. Pachauri said.

The institute also provides paid consulting. For example, engineers at the institute are designing two Indian solar parks for the Clinton Climate Initiative. Dr. Pachauri added that research institutes in poorer countries like India could not depend on government largess, as those in the United States did. The institute gets its money from a variety of sources, including the European Union, foundations and private companies.

“We have to generate our own resources from our work,” he said. “This is an institute that has pulled itself up by its bootstraps.”

But even some academics who accept that climate change is a problem are concerned about such activities.

“This is not about whether this is a good person or a good cause; it’s about the integrity of the scientific process,” Dr. Pielke said, adding: “This has become so polarized, it’s like you must be in cahoots with the bad guys if you are at all negative about Pachauri.”