Explosion at Vicinity Energy plant knocks out hot water to UPenn

An explosion in a steam pipe at the Vicinity Energy plant temporarily knocked out heat and hot water to the University of Pennsylvania on Sunday and damaged the Grays Ferry facility, according to the union representing workers at the site.

The incident caused a loud boom, rained debris down on a building where an employee was present, and blew asbestos insulation into spaces inside the plant, officials with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 614 said.

No one was near the affected pipe when it burst and no one was injured in the incident, which occurred late Saturday or early Sunday morning, they said. A similar explosion at a Vicinity Energy steam plant in Boston in 2021 hurt three people and led to an investigation by the Massachusetts State Fire Marshal. 

The incident follows the recent filing of a federal OSHA complaint by the union over alleged safety hazards at the plant, including standing water around electrical equipment and a lack of protective gear for workers.

Local 614 officials said the explosion may have occurred because Vicinity hadn’t fixed a known, faulty valve on the pipe. They contended that it reflects the Boston-based company’s broader failure to properly train employees and take steps to ensure their safety.

“This disaster is the result of years of dysfunction at Vicinity, a lack of standard operating procedures, and inadequate training for workers,” Local 14 president Larry Anastasi said. “Their repeated negligence and careless disregard has put our members, our neighbors, and our entire community at risk.”

Vicinity Energy declined to answer questions about what caused the explosion or how many of its steam heat customers were affected. A spokesperson criticized the union for claiming the explosion had blown loose asbestos into the surrounding residential neighborhood. 

“Vicinity objects strongly to the spurious allegations. Our community is safe,” the spokesperson said. “While we did experience a steam release, it was fully contained within the building. Claims of asbestos in the neighborhood are patently false and irresponsible. Our team worked around the clock to restore the system to normal operation, including restoring heat to all our customers.”

Union pressure on corporate employers

The incident occurred during a period of heightened activism by the union, which is about to start contract negotiations with Vicinity. 

IBEW Local 614 is a relatively young and small union. It was chartered in 2005 and has 1,647 members who are employees at PECO, Penske, Vicinity, and Constellation Energy (formerly a part of Exelon), according to its website and a report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. It has about $700,000 in assets.

By comparison, the politically influential IBEW Local 98 — formerly headed by John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty, who is in prison for a federal corruption conviction — is 125 years old and reports having about 4,500 members and $113 million in assets. Unlike Local 614’s members, Local 98 members work for contractors and are assigned to different building projects by union higher-ups.

Another regional IBEW, Collegeville-based Local 126, has 3,400 members and $57 million in assets.

Anastasi became Local 614’s president in 2018 and said he’s been working for years to build up the union’s resources and influence. He’s been pressing employers to improve what he described as his members’ poor benefits, and wages that lag 15% to 20% behind workers in similar jobs elsewhere.

When he became president, “it was a mom-and-pop, and to go after Exelon, Constellation and Vicinity, to even attempt to fight — you really have to build your army, and you have to train everybody, you have to fund them, and you have to learn a lot. It’s worth it, but it just takes time.”

Local 614 has sought to pressure the big corporations its members work for by highlighting alleged maintenance and operational failures that it says create safety hazards. 

Earlier this year, Anastasi criticized PECO for incidents in which falling electrical wires started house fires and injured residents, and last month he accused Vicinity of leaving electrocution and asbestos hazards at the plant unaddressed for years.

The steam explosion also happened as Vicinity Energy’s owner, the French private equity firm Antin Infrastructure Partners, tries to sell off the company and its 19 energy plants in 12 U.S. cities. Antin acquired the facilities from Veolia Environmental in July 2019 for $1.25 billion, according to media reports.

Local 614 officials allege Vicinity has recently been doing renovations of the corporate office portion of the Grays Ferry plant, in preparation for a sale, while skimping on safety and other needs elsewhere in the facility.

Vicinity Energy’s spokesperson didn’t respond to a question about the role of the contract negotiations in the union’s complaint.

Blaming a faulty valve

The explosion was caused by a water hammer, a sudden increase in pressure that can cause a pipe to burst, according to Sean Finnegan, a longtime Vicinity employee who is Local 614’s business manager at the plant.

The system that blew out Saturday had a steam trap, or valve, that was supposed to automatically drain out any condensed water that accumulates, Finnegan said. The device wasn’t working and a work order had been put in to fix it, but the repair never happened, he said.

The Vicinity plant supplies steam heat to hundreds of buildings through an extensive network of underground pipes. As a cold snap approached last week and the plant prepared to satisfy an expected increase in demand, a boiler that had been out of commission for repairs for about a year was fired up, and a supervisor started opening it up to release steam into the pipe system, Finnegan said.

When the steam hit condensed water in the pipe, the water rapidly heated up and expanded, he said.

“The pressure in the line has nowhere to go. It’s just going to break the pipe,” he said. “We’ve had it happen before, in the past, but nothing like this, where it blew apart.”

The explosion knocked down masonry from the surrounding walls, pieces of metal equipment, wiring, and asbestos insulation, the union officials said. Debris landed on top of a break room where an employee was sitting, the union officials said. 

“He thought the building was collapsing,” Finnegan said. “He hid under the table at one point.”

The explosion resulted in a sudden drop in steam at the University of Pennsylvania, one of Vicinity’s biggest customers, which is fed by pipes running under the Schuylkill River. 

“Lower steam pressure is impacting the heating and hot water temperatures in all campus buildings,” university officials wrote in an email to students living in dormitories, according to a copy provided by Local 614. “This will impact hot water to sinks and showers as well as heat in your room.” The school sent around security guards to check for open windows in an effort to prevent pipes from freezing and bursting, the message said.

“Don’t you love it when it snows and this is just the day for the hot water to stop working in your dorm,” a commenter wrote in the r/UPenn section of Reddit. “I just took a shower. It. Was. Miserable. I got brain freeze from the water on my scalp.”

Hot water had been restored to the dorm by Monday, the commenter wrote. A university spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Asbestos within, if not without

The union said loose fibers of potentially carcinogenic asbestos insulation were blown out into the exterior air, threatening the plant’s neighbors. Vicinity Energy said that was untrue. The company notified the city and has been monitoring nearby air quality, according to Philadelphia Health Department spokesperson James Garrow.

“Air sampling is being and has been conducted by Vicinity, in response to Health Department recommendations, around the exterior of the building to demonstrate control and that no public impact exists,” Garrow said. Samples collected so far show asbestos levels are safely below acceptable levels, he said.

However, asbestos is definitely present throughout the part of the plant where the explosion happened, Finnegan said. 

On Monday the company fitted workers with respirators and protective suits so they can safely walk through a frequently used hallway that is now littered with asbestos, but they are trying to avoid the area, he said.

Vicinity was looking for an asbestos abatement contractor to come in and clean up the material, which must be done before other repairs can proceed and the boiler can be used again, Finnegan said.

He and Anastasi attributed the accident to Vicinity managers’ unfamiliarity with the quirks of the 110-year-old plant and its antiquated equipment, a loss of experienced staff due to low wages, and the lack of basic maintenance systems. 

“There’s not a lot of what they call institutional memory left in the organization,” Anastasi said. “The older guys leave. There’s no real training program. They don’t proceduralize things that they’re supposed to proceduralize.”  

The Vicinity Energy spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about Local 614’s claims.

Editor’s note: The description of who Local 98 members work for was corrected.

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