Ceremony planned as Laurens CPW receives $5M natural gas grant

Laurens, South Carolina – There will be a brief award ceremony in The Magnolia Room of The Laurens County Museum at 10 a.m. this Friday, May 19 as the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) Natural Gas Distribution Infrastructure Safety and Modernization (NGDISM) presents Laurens Commission of Public Works with a Natural Gas infrastructure award of more than $5 million.

The public is invited to the ceremony as well as to a reception which will immediately follow.

Announced to commissioners at last week’s meeting of the LCPW, the award of $5,083,760 is the only federal natural gas infrastructure award ever received by LCPW, and the utility company is one of only two statewide which received the grant. The other was York County Gas.

The award in the amount of $5,083,760 will be presented to CPW officials and commissioners by a representative of the federal agency. The purpose of this grant is to assist in the repair, rehabilitation, or replacement of aging, leak-prone distribution pipeline infrastructure, and the acquisition of equipment to reduce incidents and fatalities and avoid economic losses.

“It’s unprecedented,” said CPW General Manager John Young. “In the 100 year history of CPW we have never received a state or federal grant for natural gas projects.”

All the natural gas pipelines fall under the same regulations, Young said. Since natural gas is transported across state lines, Young said, PHMSA is a division of the United States Department of Transportation.