History of Manufactured Gas - Legal, Regulatory, Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Gas Manufacture

Legal, Regulatory, Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Gas Manufacture

Gas lighting was one of the most debated technology of the first industrial revolution. In Paris, in particular, as soon as 1823 a public controversy forced the government to devise safety norms (Fressoz, 2007). The residues produced from distilled coal were either disposed into rivers or stocked in basins which polluted (and still pollute) the soil.

Case law in the United Kingdom and the United States clearly held though the construction and operation of a gas-works was not the creation of a public nuisance in se, due to the reputation of gas-works as highly undesirable neighbors, and the noxious pollution known to issue from such, especially in the early days of manufactured gas, gas-works were on extremely short notice from the courts that (detectable) contamination outside of their grounds – especially in residential districts – would be severely frowned upon. Indeed, many actions for the abatement of nuisances brought before the courts did result in unfavorable verdicts for gas manufacturers – in one study on early environmental law, actions for nuisance involving gas-works resulted in findings for the plaintiffs 80% of the time, compared with an overall plaintiff victory rate of 28.5% in industrial nuisance cases.

Injunctions both preliminary and permanent could and were often issued in cases involving gas-works. For example, the ill reputation of gas-works became so well known that in City of Cleveland vs. Citizens' Gas Light Co., 20 N. J. Eq. 201, a court went so far as to enjoin a future gas-works not yet even built – preventing it from causing annoying and offensive vapours and odors in the first place. The injunction not only regulated the gas manufacturing process – forbidding the use of lime purification – but also provided that if nuisances of any sort were to issue from the works – a permanent injunction forbidding the production of gas would issue from the court. Indeed, as the Master of the Rolls, Lord Langdale, once remarked in his opinion in Haines v. Taylor, 10 Beavan 80, that I have been rather astonished to hear the effects of gas works treated as nothing...every man, in these days, must have sufficient experience, to enable him to come to the conclusion, that, whether a nuisance or not, a gas manufactory is a very disagreeable thing. Nobody can doubt that the volatile products which arise from the distillation of coal are extremely offensive. It is quite contrary to common experience to say they are not so...every man knows it. However, as time went by, gas-works began to be seen as more as a double-edged sword – and eventually as a positive good, as former nuisances were abated by technological improvements, and the full benefits of gas became clear. There were several major impetuses that drove this phenomenon:

  • regulation of pollution from gas-works (in the case of the United Kingdom, with the passage of the Gas-works Clauses Act 1847), which increased the cost of pollution, previously being near zero, leading to the development of technologies that abated the ongoing pollution nuisances (in many cases, turning discarded former pollutants into profitable by-products);
  • the rise of the "smoke nuisance" in the 1850s, brought about by the domestic and commercial use of coal, in many cities and metropolises; direct combustion of coal being a particularly notorious source of pollution; which the widespread use of gas could abate, especially with the commencement of using gas for purposes other than illuminating during the 1870s; for cooking, for the heating of dwelling-houses, for making domestic hot water, for raising steam, for industrial and chemical purposes, and for stationary internal combustion engine-driving purposes – which were previously met by employing coal;
  • the development of high-pressure gas mains, and compressors (1900s); these were capable of efficiently transporting gas over long distances, allowing one manufactured gas plant to supply a relatively large area – leading to the concentration of gas-manufacturing operations, instead of their geographic distribution; this resulted in gas-works being able to be located away from residential and commercial districts, where their presence could result in discomfort and concern for the inhabitants thereof;

Both the era of consolidation of gas-works through high-pressure distribution systems (1900s–1930s) and the end of the era of manufactured gas (1955–1975) saw gas-works being shut down due to redundancies. What brought about the end of manufactured gas was that pipelines began to be built to bring natural gas directly from the well to gas distribution systems. Natural gas was superior to the manufactured gas of that time, being cheaper – extracted from wells rather than manufactured in a gas-works – more user friendly – coming from the well requiring little, if any, purification – and safer – due to the lack of carbon monoxide in the distributed product. Upon being shut down, few former manufactured gas plant sites were brought to an acceptable level of environmental cleanliness to allow for their re-use, at least by contemporary standards. In fact, many were literally abandoned in place, with process wastes left in situ, and never adequately disposed of.

As the wastes produced by former manufactured gas plants were persistent in nature, they often (as of 2009) still contaminate the site of former manufactured gas plants: the waste causing the most concern today is primarily coal tar (mixed long-chain aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons, a byproduct of coal carbonization), while "blue billy" (a noxious byproduct of lime purification contaminated with cyanides) as well as other lime and coal tar residues are regarded as lesser, though significant environmental hazards. Some former manufactured gas plants are sometimes still are owned by the gas utilities of today, often in an effort to prevent contaminated land from falling into public use, and inadvertently causing the release of the wastes therein contained. Others have fallen into public use, and without proper reclamation, have caused – often severe – health hazards for their users. When and where necessary, former manufactured gas plants are subject to environmental remediation laws, and can be subject to legally mandated cleanups.

Read more about this topic:  History Of Manufactured Gas

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