North Shore Gas ,People's Gas, People's Energy Northshore Gas says "Too bad, take a day off work" to wait for their inspection agent Chicago Illinois

I recently received a letter from North Shore Gas (NSG) -our local gas utility threatening to disconnect our gas service if we didn't respond to their letter. Since we've always paid our gas bills in-full, and on-time, this was a surprise.

My surprise turned to disbelief as I read farther down the page. Therein, NSG claims that they must conduct an Inside Safety Inspection our our natural gas service and meter inside our home (yep, our meter is one of those that's inside the house - the meter reader takes the reading through a little window in the bricks). They claim that This periodic inspection is not optional and is required by federal law. NSG allows for appointments to be scheduled in Morning or Afternoon windows from 8AM-12PM or 12PM to 4PM Monday through Saturday.

Periodic? How periodic? Federal Law? What Federal Law? What if someone works during those days and times and isn't available? These are some of the questions I had. So I contacted NSG.

After wading through their voice menu, and sitting on hold for about 10 minutes, I was connected with a Customer Service Representative (CSR) named Phylicia C. I asked the CSR 1) what the precise Federal Law was that they were alleging required an inside inspection, and 2) what if someone worked during the times and days they had available to schedule.

The CSR's responses were 1) She didn't have that information, and to contact the Illinois Commerce Commission, 2) Too bad. Take a day off work..

I asked for the CSR's supervisor and was refused. I asked for Supervisor's manager and was refused. I asked for the Call Center's director and was refused. I asked for the name of NSG's general counsel and was refused.

I said good bye, hung up, called back, sat on hold for another 6 minutes, explained myself to a new CSR, and she transferred me to a hold queue where I listened to messages about how to schedule an appointment for the next 5 minutes before hanging up.

After that I did some research - from what I can gather right now, the Federal DOT passed some safety rules about inspecting gas pipelines, mains, and equipment like that. The IL State Legislature passed a law (220 ILCS 20/) requiring the ICC to create rules and regulations to the adopt safety standards in compliance with the Federal Regulations. The ICC In those regulations, adopted 49CFR 191.23, 49CFR 192, 49CFR 193, and 49 CFR 199.

* 49 CFR 191.23 is about reporting safety issues.
* 49 CFR 192 is about Transportation of Gas by pipeline, and minimum safety requirements (Subpart H relates to customer meters, service regulators, and service lines)
* 49 CFR 193 is about Federal safety standards for Liquid Natural Gas facilities
* 49 CFR 199 is about drug and alcohol testing.

49 CFR 192 is really the only regulation that appears to apply to my situation, and it states that the inspections involved in this discussion should take place every 5 years. Further, found at 49CFR 192.1(b)(5)(ii), it's stated in part that the minimum safety standards do not apply to a single customer if the system is located entirely on the customer's premises.

Last time I checked, I'm a single customer so these standards for inspection should not apply to me.

Moreover, there's precedent at the US Supreme Court level (Camera v. San Francisco (387 U.S. 523 [ 1967 ] ) which basically holds that inspections are considered searches under the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution, and require a warrant.

In essence, the Federal Government knows that they can't require inspections of individual homes without a warrant being issued first, and clearly took that into consideration when they drafted the regulations. But it would seem that that paragraph was missed by someone, and here we are with a rule that NSG is trying to enforce because the ICC (a State Governmental Agency which has to follow the US and IL State Constitutions too) has written a regulation that they are compelling NSG to enact.

In fact, there's several cases that have been in front of the ICC related to this very matter, and the ICC has apparently seen fit to fine People's Gas (of which I believe NSG is a subsidiary) $500,000.00 for not completing all of the ISI's on the list (there's about 10,000 outstanding).

But things got more interesting as I continued to dig. People's Gas has made two requests of the ICC that are related to this supposed regulation. 1) To be able to charge people a $200.00 refundable fee for not scheduling the inspection - to be refunded after the inspection is performed, 2) To change the fiscal year of their inspections from the current January to December, to June through July. The change of the fiscal year would solve the problem of disconnecting gas (read: HEAT) during the winter months, by making the issue of disconnection occur during the mid-summer.

Because I'm not a lawyer, and may have missed something in my reading of the laws/rules/regulations, I've filed a complaint with the ICC asking for:

1) The specific Federal Law upon which they rely

2) How they can claim to compel an inside inspection without a warrant issued without probable cause

3) Whether or not NSG is going to be required to remunerate people for taking a day off work to sit at home for 4 hours and wait for an NSG Agent to come by to inspect the natural gas service and meter.

I'm waiting to see what the next step will be But for everyone reading this, I urge you to not allow any inside inspections of anything ever, by any governmental or quasi-governmental agency without a warrant issued upon probable cause.

This isn't a one-shot thing folks (and even if it was, I'd still have a problem with it). NSG wants to do it every 5 years. Who's to say that they'll want to change that time frame at some point in the future? What about every year? Every 6 months? What other utility or agency is going to want to come in and poke around under the guise of Safety or some public concern? What if they decide to start inspecting other things - where's the limitations? (Those would have to be detailed in a warrant)

Other concerns such as:

* How do I know the person showing up really works for the gas company? What if it's someone who created a badge, and has a North Shore Gas Contractor truck? What if they stole a gas company truck?
* What if something I own catches their eye and they come back to rob me? What if they don't wish me any harm, but just happen to be talking with someone they know and THAT person who they know (and I don't know) comes and robs me?

There's a few other what if's' that I could come up with, but the gist is that Trust Is Transitive - that means that I have to trust everyone that the other guy trusts, and I don't even know that guy, so why would I want to trust people of someone I don't know? Not being paranoid here, just careful. There's way too many stories in the media about phony utility workers, or actual utility workers gone bad, or people coming in under false pretenses.

You don't have any of those worries if these people aren't in or about your property in the first place. And given the fact that natural gas has been flowing into homes for over 100 years, through meters and into stoves/furnaces/hot water heaters with a minimum of incidents - I'm not buying into the whole Public Safety excuse. If houses were blowing up because of meters that suddenly started leaking, we'd be hearing about it on the news

Say NO to the Inside Inspection. File complaints with the ICC. Talk to your Council Members, Alderman, Alderwoman, Representative, Senator, anyone who will listen. This is unnecessary, unreasonable, and unconstitutional. It needs to stop now.

Dg
Highland Park, Illinois
U.S.A.