Wouldn't It Be So Hilarious!

I've heard and read that National Grid's new plastic natural gas pipes which they are burying around town are expected to be transporting gas for the next one hundred years, about as long as the metal pipes they are replacing have lasted.  I don't know how anyone would be able to determine that buried plastic pipes carrying natural gas can last a century, but whatever.  Welcome to the 21st century, where metal is out and plastic is everywhere, seen and unseen.  We'll just have to hope that one of humanity's most environmentally destructive, unhealthy and problematic manufactured substances holds up well for us as it sits a few feet under our streets and sidewalks.  For a really, really long time.

We should also hope that no one has messed with the black plastic pipe that National Grid left out in the street on Friday along the curb in the 300 block of State Street for anyone to touch. It would be a real hoot if in the dark on Friday or Saturday night someone decided to remove the cap at the end of the pipe to stuff a bunch of old socks in there and then replace the cap so that National Grid had no idea of the clog.  You know, just to mess with a company for being so stupid and careless as to leave a pipe exposed on a street for an entire weekend.  Learn them a lesson!  We all know that stranger and dumber things have happened.

National Grid, a company devoted to 
carelessness and stupidity!  And safety last!

Or how about if tonight someone with a battery-powered electric drill and small drill bit were to punch a few holes through the bottom of the pipe that NG doesn't notice before burying the pipe and sending natural gas through it?  Wouldn't that be hilarious, especially if National Grid fails to discover their leaking natural gas pipe before an entire block of houses and a street are destroyed in a fiery explosion that kills and injures dozens of Hudson residents?  Of course, the cause(s) of the massive explosion would never be found, would it?  

Or perhaps National Grid discovers one (or both!) of the pranks in a few months, forcing them to dig up the street once again to replace the vandalized pipe they left exposed on the street next to the sidewalk for an entire weekend in the year 2024.  

Should ANYONE besides a NG employee
be able to touch or get anywherenear this pipe?

What if a random unwitnessed incident were to occur that caused the exposed pipe to be damaged and no one at National Grid detected it?  Stranger things have happened to things left out that shouldn't be, right?  ESPECIALLY THINGS LEFT IN A BUSY STREET FOR AN ENTIRE WEEKEND OR MORE! 

 Leaving this out for 3 days and 3 nights is
considered "safe"? How about four or five?

Wouldn't it be fun to ask the CEO of National Grid, John Pettigrew, if leaving a long portion of natural gas pipe exposed on the street next to a sidewalk for an entire weekend is his company's typical modus operandi? I'm pretty sure his response would begin with the words, "Well, it depends ..," a common introduction to a response from someone who has no interest in taking responsibility for their own actions or the actions of the company they supposedly manage.

I also wonder how the people at the NY State Department of Public Service would feel about National Grid leaving their gas pipes out on the street to be easily vandalized or randomly damaged. The DPS is the state agency that is requiring National Grid to replace every metal gas pipe they own and maintain in the entire state, and they are expecting National Grid's new plastic gas pipes underneath our streets and sidewalks to admirably and safely service Hudson for at least the next one hundred years.