A-G sues over broken natural gas line

The Iowa Attorney General’s suing a central Iowa contractor for leaving a broken gas line that could have been a ticking time bomb. The Attorney General’s office says Greg Coalbank was digging to install phone lines in Hartford when he cut into the natural gas pipeline to a house…and then, according to the suit, “attempted a crude patch” himself, backfilling with dirt and leaving the site without ever notifying Iowa’s “One Call” hotline. Workers are supposed to check OneCall before digging to get the location of utility lines, and notify the OneCall center when and where they’ll be doing work. They also are required by law to call the center and report any damage done to an underground line, and NOT to cover it up until the damage has been investigated. In the Hartford case, the patch was found two months later, by a MidAmerican Energy crew investigating a gas leak there. The suit against the Warren County excavator seeks civil penalties up to ten-thousand dollars a day