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A controversial pipeline replacement project is getting more scrutiny from D.C. regulators amid fears of rising utility bills 41%
By Akoma29%
7/30/2026, 12:13:19 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Recency Bias, Burden of Proof, and Confirmation Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 20.5% saturation with 205 hits. Analysis detected 1,505 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,002 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41.8% and a BS Rank of 41% (13,911 of 23,571 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 59.00% of the article peer group.
Washington Gas’s plan to spend $150 million replacing aging pipes across D.C. is now up in the air, with regulators agreeing to give it a second look amid heightened concerns about rising utility bills .
The D.C.
Public Service Commission, which oversees the city’s gas and electric monopolies, signed off on the three-year plan back in March after years of debate .
But regulators agreed to a new round of hearings on the case, which wrapped up Tuesday, after the D.C. government and environmentalists claimed they failed to properly evaluate the utility’s claims about the project.
This opens the door for the commission to further modify Washington Gas’s plans or even scrap them entirely.
The company claims the project is a narrowly tailored, sorely needed measure to swap out cast iron pipes that are leaking natural gas and have the potential to cause explosions.
But Attorney General Brian Schwalb, arguing on behalf of the city government, believes the current plan gives Washington Gas wide latitude to work on all manner of infrastructure projects, regardless of the immediate need — and use this work to justify jacking up utility rates in the process.
“We cannot continue to give Washington Gas a blank check funded on the backs of ratepayers, especially when its pipe replacement project is behind schedule, over budget, and locks us into paying for a gas system that will soon be obsolete,” Schwalb wrote in a statement.
“Any plan the commission approves must keep the community safe from dangerous gas leaks, ensure project funds are spent wisely, not wasted, and protect ratepayers from excessive and unwarranted rate increases.”
The two-day proceedings featured a number of contentious exchanges between D.C. attorneys and the utility’s executives — at one point, commission chair Emile Thompson admonished both sides not to “use terms to deride and degrade one party or another.”
But the hearings did not feature any conclusive action by the Public Service Commission itself: the three-member panel will rule sometime in the coming weeks on whether to let the plan move ahead, make changes or send it back to the drawing board.
The commission previously ordered Washington Gas to substantially reduce the scope of its pipe replacement plans before approving the last version of them this spring, but since then, rising utility bills have become even more of a hot-button issue in the city’s politics and drawn the commission intense scrutiny from mayoral and D.C.
Council candidates alike.
Schwalb’s lawyers, as well as those with the local chapter of the Sierra Club and the city’s Office of the People’s Counsel, spent the bulk of the hearings trying to establish that there’s scant evidence the Washington Gas plan approved by the PSC actually “improves cost-effectiveness, addresses the District’s climate-related goals, or properly prioritizes the most at-risk projects,” as they argued in an April filing .
The utility’s executives countered that the plan, dubbed “District SAFE,” meets all of those goals, arguing the company is responding to alarms raised by federal officials more than a decade ago about the poor condition of these metal pipes under city streets.
“We cannot go backwards on this,” said Cynthia Quarterman, a consultant for Washington Gas who led some of the Obama administration’s efforts to spur the replacement of these natural gas pipes.
“In the District of Columbia, only 11 percent of cast iron pipes have been removed.
We need to keep moving forward.”
But the city’s lawyers observed in their filings that the current structure of the plan incentivizes Washington Gas to spend more money, not necessarily fix leaking pipes.
That’s because the company can begin asking for “accelerated cost recovery,” generally in the form of raising utility rates, once it proves its spent a certain amount of remediating pipes in bad condition.
Public Service Commissioner Richard Beverly, who was the lone vote against the company’s plan, argues this has the effect of “encouraging [Washington Gas] to run up the bill for pipe replacements as fast as possible” and take on lengthy, complex projects first, even if they aren’t necessarily the most urgent.
Environmentalists argue this has the added effect of locking the city into relying on this natural gas infrastructure, even though D.C. leaders have pledged to wind down their use of fossil fuels within the next 20 years.
D.C. attorneys repeatedly hammered home this point in their questions, pressing the company for evidence replacing these pipes would actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions as opposed to speeding the adoption of electric systems.
“Is it fair to say [Washington Gas] is seeking accelerated [cost] recovery because it doesn’t expect rising sales to cover its capital investments?”
Special Assistant Attorney General Shilpa Sadhasivam asked a company executive during one hearing.
Rachelle Whitacre, the company’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs, denied this charge and said it is only seeking that money to “remove the leak-prone pipe from the system to make it safe and reliable.”
It’s not yet clear when the PSC will render its decision following these hearings.
And there’s always the possibility that a future commission could look to make further changes to the plan even if it passes — Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, who is poised to become the city’s next mayor , has repeatedly pledged to appoint new members of the commission who are more skeptical of the utilities’ attempts to secure rate hikes.
At least some sort of shake-up on the commission is likely in the very near future.
Thompson, the PSC chair, told employees Wednesday he plans to resign on Aug. 14, per multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Mayor Muriel Bowser could seek to appoint a replacement ahead of her departure from office at the end of the year; or leave it the next mayor to decide.
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