To the editor:

The recent article on the Old Mill Lane gas facility reminds some of us that the 2019 outage was caused by a valve failure in Weymouth and a failure to release more supply in Providence. Or so we were told.

The supplier told us it was unusually cold. An October 2018 report to the PUC by the gas company analyzed the situation. It said capacity was adequate.

At one time, there was a peaking station on the Navy base at Coddington Cove. This was silently abandoned before the January 2019 incident. We were told that the truck drivers had problems getting security clearances. There must be a hundred trucks a day making deliveries to the base. They seem to get on the base with relative ease.

Over 30 years ago, we were told that the gas main in Tiverton, Little Compton and Portsmouth was going to be upgraded. It was completed about two years ago.

The public will probably never know the whole story about the outage. It would be nice to know if the ratepayers or the company’s stockholders took the hit for this incident.

In closing, the company should know that cold weather on Aquidneck means there is ice on the ponds for skating. It also means various parts of the bay freeze over. The history of degree days for Rhode Island can be Googled.

Philip Driscoll

Portsmouth