In this episode of the Pipeliners Podcast, host Russel Treat is joined by Tracey Bryant of CenterPoint Energy and Kelee Lusk of Atmos Energy to discuss the Texas Pipeline Awareness Alliance (TPAA). They explore the organization’s history, collaborative efforts, and innovative strategies for enhancing public awareness about pipeline safety. The conversation highlights how pooling resources and leveraging modern media technologies help pipeline operators effectively reach diverse stakeholders across Texas.
Texas Pipeline Awareness Alliance Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms
- Tracey Bryant is the Manager for Public Awareness at CenterPoint Energy. Connect with Tracey on LinkedIn.
- CenterPoint Energy, Inc. is an American utility company based in Houston, Texas, that provides electric and natural gas utility to customers in several markets in the American states of Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Texas.
- Kelee Lusk is a compliance analyst at Atmos Energy. Connect with Kelee on LinkedIn.
- Atmos Energy Corporation, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is one of the United States’ largest natural-gas-only distributors, serving about three million natural gas distribution customers in over 1,400 communities in nine states from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the East to the Rocky Mountains in the West. Atmos Energy also manages company-owned natural gas pipeline and storage assets, including one of the largest intrastate natural gas pipeline systems in Texas.
- Texas Pipeline Awareness Alliance (TPAA): A collaborative organization of pipeline operators in Texas, established in 2006 to promote public safety messaging about pipelines. Members pool resources to advertise safety messages across all 254 Texas counties.
- API (American Petroleum Institute) is a national trade association that represents all aspects of America’s oil and natural gas industry.
- RP 1162 is an industry consensus standard that provides guidance and recommendations to pipeline operators for the development and implementation of enhanced public awareness programs.
- API 1173 established the framework for operators to implement Pipeline Safety Management Systems. The PSMS standard includes 10 core elements. The API Energy Excellence Program followed this model to establish its 13 core elements.
- PipelineSMS.org is a useful resource with various safety tools that was developed by pipeline operators to help other operators enhance safety in their operation. Read the website resources or email pipelinesms@api.org with inquiries.
- The Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle (PDCA) is embedded in Pipeline SMS as a continuous quality improvement model consisting of a logical sequence of four repetitive steps for continuous improvement and learning
- The Public Awareness Rule is a set of PHMSA pipeline safety regulations that require pipeline operators to conduct continuing public awareness programs to provide pipeline safety information to stakeholder audiences.
- 811 (Call Before You Dig) is the federally designated call-before-you-dig phone number, designed to make the notification step of the safe excavation process as easy as possible. A person is required to call the 811 number 48 to 72 hours before beginning any excavation or digging projects to allow time for locators to mark the approximate location of any buried infrastructure before excavation begins. Prior to the implementation of 811, people who dug had to know one-call center’s 800 number, or notify utilities individually.
- Right-of-Way is a strip of land encompassing buried pipelines and other natural gas equipment allowing them to be permanently located on public and/or private land to provide natural gas service.
- PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) ensures the safe transportation of energy and hazardous materials.
- Geofencing: A digital advertising method used to target specific geographical areas with pipeline safety messages. It allows operators to serve targeted ads to individuals near pipeline facilities.
- Gas Leak Recognition and Response: Public education on how to identify gas leaks (e.g., smell, sight, sound) and what actions to take, such as evacuating the area and calling emergency services.
Texas Pipeline Awareness Alliance Full Episode Transcript
Russel Treat: Welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast,” episode 372, sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, providers of POEMS, the Pipeline Operations Excellence Management System, operations and compliance software for the pipeline operator to address safety program management, control room management, and field operations. Find out more about POEMS at enersyscorp.com.
[background music]
Announcer: The Pipeliners Podcast, where professionals, bubba geeks, and industry insiders share their knowledge and experience about technology, projects, and pipeline operations. Now your host, Russel Treat.
Russel: Thanks for listening to the Pipeliners Podcast. I appreciate you taking the time. To show that appreciation, we give away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener every episode. This week, our winner is Kristina Cochran with Enduring Resources. Congratulations, Kristina. Your YETI’s on its way. To learn how you can win this prize, stick around till the end of the episode.
This week, we speak with Tracey Bryant from CenterPoint and Kelee Cochran from Atmos Energy. We’re going to talk about the Texas Pipeline Awareness Alliance and how they’re collaborating to reach stakeholders. Tracey, Kelee, welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.
Kelee Cochran: Thank you. We’re excited.
Tracey Bryant: Thanks for having me on today.
Russel: We’re very glad to have you guys. As I always do, I like to ask you guys to do a brief introduction. Tell us a little bit about who you are, who you work for, and what you do.
Kelee: My name’s Kelee Lusk. I work for Atmos Energy. Been in the wild and crazy world of natural gas for about 25 years. Responsible for our MidTex and our Atmos Pipeline Texas Division’s public awareness program.
Russel: Awesome. Tracey, same question.
Tracey: Hey. Right there at the 25-year mark as well. I’ve been working with CenterPoint Energy, on the distribution side of our pipeline world, for about 25 years now and oversee our public awareness program for the six various states across the country, a lot on the damage prevention side as well. Happy to talk to everybody today.
Russel: I’ve asked you guys to come on and talk about the Texas Pipeline Awareness Alliance, so TPAA. Maybe you could tell me a little bit about what is the TPAA, when was it founded, maybe a little of the history, just build context for the listeners.
Kelee: TPAA basically was formed in 2006. We’re coming up on our 20-year anniversary next year. It was a bunch of pipeline operators, distribution, and transmission. We all got together. We were like, we’ve got to be able to reach out to all these folks, and get our public safety messaging out. How’s the best way that we can do that?
We all came together, actually CenterPoint and Atmos were both founding members of this organization. What we do, we just pool our resources together to make it where we can actually advertise in all 254 counties in the state of Texas, getting those damage prevention, leak recognition, write away messages out to anyone who could be impacted by our facilities.
We started out as a need because of how expensive it is to advertise across this large state.
Russel: Anybody who’s heard about Texas, we always say everything’s bigger in Texas, but I don’t think people really understand just how big Texas is. We’re 900 miles from Louisiana to New Mexico. We’re 900 miles from Brownsville to Dalhart, that’s north-south, for folks that don’t know. Again, how many counties do we have in Texas?
Kelee: We have 254.
Russel: How many members are there of the TPAA?
Kelee: I believe we’ve got around 10 that are members right now with us. We’ve got some pipeline operators like Energy Transfer, Texas Gas Services, those companies are members of our organization.
Tracey: It’s pretty interesting that these folks come together about 20 years ago now and it all started a lot with the RP 1162 regulation. That regulation came out and said, thou shall do all of the whole list of things for compliance. Not only do you have to reach out to the public, but there’s also requirements for the excavators, public officials, and the emergency responders.
The TPAA is a great example of how collaboration can work in Texas, and then we’ve got experience across the country with some similar programs. I tell you that Texas Alliance really helps given the challenges there. There are just so many people and so many pipelines in that geography that TPAA helps whenever you have that return on investment of all the things we’re doing.
Kelee: You have to reach out to people that are outside of your customer. You’ve got that little old lady who lives across the street from your pipeline, but she’s all electric, we’ve got to reach out to her, too. It’s very, very challenging. You’ve got to be very creative to be able to accomplish this.
Russel: When the original public awareness standard came out and the rule came out, the mechanism was primarily bulk mail. Now, we have a lot of other things that we can do that are more cost effective, but I could see where just some of the requirements.
I’m not familiar with the regulation or the standard, either one, but I know there are some standards around you have to get a certain level of connection. Some of these counties are very sparsely populated, and I got to think that’s a big challenge, just knowing who to direct your communication at.
Kelee: Which is why you got to do multiple things to accomplish that, not just mailing a brochure. [laughs]
Tracey: Some of that, that we’ve had success with, with the group is really leaning into the technology around…You hear about geofencing and digital stuff, so we’re getting better at putting our messages out on YouTube, for example, and Twitter or X, using social media, the way people consume media now is so much different than when that regulation came out.
As we think about how do you target the right people when they become an active digger, or the ones that are in or near the gas pipelines, it gets real interesting the way that we can find these people using technology and serve them up all those valuable messages.
Russel: Talk to me if you would about the nature of the collaboration. What are you guys pooling resources to do? Are you sharing direct mail pieces? Are you collaborating on identifying? What kinds of collaboration are you guys doing within the TPAA?
Kelee: The big resource is money, so we’re pulling all of our money together, so we can accomplish those outreaches. That was the big thing. I just got asked recently, “Hey, Kelee, if we needed to advertise in these areas, how much would it cost you to do that?”
Ironically, it’s the same dollar amount that Atmos pays TPAA to do all 254 counties. A lot better bang for your buck when you got all these operators that are coming together to bring in those financial resources.
Tracey: It’s interesting, whenever we think about placing social media ads, for example, or to put something out on YouTube or Pandora, we can get a collaborative message that is not just branded from one company, and it’s really just that message about the safety, and it can reach a whole cluster of counties whenever you purchase that media.
I think that approach being able to collaborate and pool our resources, understanding that message recall is going to be stronger. We hope that we change their behaviors, the more they hear the same message. With us all having that same message together, Kelee, I feel like that’s been a big help.
Kelee: Oh, yeah, for sure.
Tracey: They hear the same message in different places.
Russel: Part of what the TPAA is doing is the TPAA is putting out advertising that is…A lot of what you’re communicating about pipeline safety is somewhat generic, “Call before you dig, here’s what you do if something’s happening,” all that.
Tracey: You’re right, whether it comes from one of the pipeline operators, the local utility, or even Texas 811, or anybody, it’s gas leak recognition response, and it’s called before you dig and the other key messages. It doesn’t necessarily have to have a company logo on it to be impactful, and that’s the benefit of some of these collaboratives across the country.
Russel: Interesting. I’m going to put forward an idea here and just ask you guys to speak to it. In my thinking, if you’re trying to be creative about the utilization of new media and how you’re going to utilize that to get a pipeline safety message out, there’s a fair amount of just staying on the front edge of what’s available and what the capabilities are, and that in and of itself, is no small thing.
I would expect that there’s a fair amount of collaboration just around being current with the technology and the options and all of that.
Kelee: I think TPAA, we were the first to do quite a few things. I laugh. I had a vendor that came to us one day, and they said, “Hey, we want to talk to you guys about this new technology called geofencing.” I was like, “Yeah, we’ve been geofencing for five years,” or whatever it was at that time through TPAA. We were very innovated in our approaches and how we do this outreach.
Tracey: I like to refer to it as our R&D budget.
[laughter]
Tracey: We’re going to do a lot of research and development on how to reach folks and see what the measure of success was on all of those. We’ve had some pretty crazy ideas over the years, and not all of them were successful. [laughs]
Russel: Can you tell us about one of the ideas that was crazy, and you tried and didn’t work?
Tracey: Whether it’s media, a spin on some kind of media, was pretty funny. We had some stuff in the past. Some operators may have done something like, “Don’t be that guy. He’s the guy that cut the line, and it makes him look like, the one you don’t want to be like.” That was interesting.
We’ve tried to place media. Billboards, for example, can be successful, but then they cannot, depending on what the images are.
Kelee: True.
Tracey: There’s been some lessons learned for sure, but one of the bigger ones are some of the events that we’re starting to go to. We will get a table space and have an activation on site, and we think we’re going to show up. We’ve got carts full of literature and handouts and all this stuff, and we show up, and maybe there’s only 30 people there. That was a bust, right?
Kelee: Yeah.
Tracey: Then, some of these others we go to, we get thousands of people that attend, whether it’s high school football or some other big festival that’s across the state, those are some of our most successful opportunities to educate people.
It’s interesting to focus on digital media and advertising, but man, I tell you, when you can sit and have a conversation with your stakeholders about what happens when there’s a gas leak, or how to respond to if you smell gas or call before you dig stuff, man, that’s when I feel like it sinks in, and they’re more willing to share it with their family and friends and stuff.
For me, I have a soft spot for when we do have those on-site activations and the events that we’re getting out to.
Russel: Interesting. How do you measure success when you go to an event? What’s the mechanism for measuring success?
Tracey: A lot of that is going to be, how many people were we able to talk to, and was it the right audience? I’ve been in front of a whole group of folks and thought I was doing a great job, and then I realized that most of them did not understand English. That was a big miss on my part, man.
[laughter]
Tracey: That story aside, whenever we’re out there in front of these groups, understanding who the audience is.
If we can have a meaningful conversation where they’re either an active digger, they’re a homeowner and they have a reason to be out there doing work in their property, or that they actually live and work near the pipelines, that kind of stuff really makes a difference. You learn that by the conversations that you have there.
Russel: You got to ask questions, right?
Tracey: Yeah.
Russel: A lot of times, you’re asking questions of people that really don’t have the context. Interesting. Going to pivot a little bit, talk about 1185 and maybe some of the things you’re doing there. When I think of public awareness, I think that’s more of an open loop.
It’s kind of a broadcast thing, where stakeholder engagement is more about closing those loops and getting that feedback. What are you all doing to try and close those communication loops and hear back from the stakeholders?
Tracey: That’s interesting, because we have been working on that two-way dialog for a while now. As we lean into 1185, we try and get that feedback with a lot of surveys we’re doing, whether it’s on site at some of these events.
We do have digital surveys and phone calls that we do for measuring the effectiveness of what we’re doing. The true engagement, I think each operator is still struggling to figure that piece out. What do you think, Kelee, you have anything for that?
Kelee: I know for our first responder or our emergency official stakeholder group, I feel like we’re doing a good job. As far as Atmos is concerned, they’re on getting feedback from those fire and police and that sort of thing.
Definitely, it’s a struggle, and especially with the size of our companies, makes that difficult as well, trying to accomplish that, but I know it’s something that we’re working hard at.
Tracey: The more that we’re doing these in-person events, and we’re getting out here and accepting that type of feedback, and then also taking what we hear and making it actionable, then it’s one thing for us to understand what the audience is telling us.
They’ll be like, “Yeah, maybe we’re hearing that using the 811 system was difficult for this reason or that reason,” or we hear that, “I don’t really think that when I smell gas it’s a big problem. Can I wait until dad comes this weekend to check it out?”
Some of those excuses that we hear, we turn that around into better messaging. I’m always curious if the regulation would accept that as our engagement, because we heard them, we checked and adjusted our messages. It’s a little subject to auditing and… [laughs]
Russel: If I was the inspector or the auditor, I’d give credit for that. How much credit I’d give, I don’t know. [laughs] That’s a different question, right?
Tracey: Yeah.
Russel: Certainly, that’s an indication of the conversation becoming more two way. I want to throw a couple things out, because there’s a couple things that I’ve noodle known that I have thought might be interesting mechanisms for this.
Here’s one, and that would be to go to all the county fairs and collaborate with them and put a QR code on the back of their tickets, and then have some kind of prize or giveaway or something for people who go to the website and read through the message. That’s one thing that comes up for me.
Tracey: You’re onto something there because we think about who’s our target audience, and a lot of that is that rural community, some folks that are more apt to be outdoors DIY. The folks that are attending that county fair and just engage with those outdoor activities, that is hitting right at…I’m making notes now. Look at you.
[laughter]
Russel: One of the things I think about here is, if you go to a farming community in particular, where they’re turning soil, and you’ve got pipelines, you want to make sure that those people that are turning soil are getting information that’s useful to them and specific.
By targeting county fairs or specific kinds of events, you can reach those specific kinds of people with very targeted messaging, so that’s one of the things. If I were doing what you all are doing, I’d be playing with that. If you all decide to play with it, you take credit. I don’t need credit, but I’d love to hear back and how did it go.
Kelee: We’re really good about taking each other’s ideas away from each other. We’ve had a big group together not long ago and somebody talked about, “Oh, I geofenced a concert.” Guess what I’m doing in nine days? I’m geofencing the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo. We do. We steal ideas from each other all the time, and it’s a compliment, not a bad thing.
Russel: That’s right. Willie Nelson has a song. It’s never got big, but it was on one of his albums about, why don’t we all sit around and steal each other’s song? It’s about six different guys, and they’re all playing the same melody and singing different lyrics to the same song. [laughs]
Kelee: Oh, man, that’s cool.
[crosstalk]
Tracey: …exactly what we’re doing. [laughs]
Russel: It’s the same idea. We’re all just sitting around and riffing. That’s one idea. Here’s another idea. I have this stupid game on my phone that pelts me left and right with advertising.
It’s a little word game, and I’ve often wondered sometimes how they know how to target me for advertising in that game, because some of that advertising is just way off base, but some of it is like really uncomfortably spot on. It has to do with some technology in the oil field. I’m like, “OK, that’s uncomfortably well done.”
Tracey: I wonder the same thing sometimes I was going to ask you is, how often do you get an advertisement that is relative to your habits and lifestyle. As we learn more about putting our ads out there, we can get so much more granular than just the old days, it was geo…You had your background. You want a male or female in an age group.
Now you can say, “I want someone that has visited a Home Depot in the last 30 days,” or “I want someone that has searched for how to plant a tree.” It is so specific when we fill out the application for serving an ad, you can get very granular nowadays. It’s scary, I agree.
Kelee: It makes you want to turn your location service off on your phone, too, sometimes, because we will find you.
Russel: I keep it turned off, ma’am.
Kelee: We will find you. [laughs]
Russel: I keep it turned off.
Kelee: We’ll go find you again.
Russel: They still find me.
Kelee: TPAA, we did a campaign where we geofenced Home Depots and that sort of thing in April. Then during August 811 days, we went back and grabbed those same people that we’d gotten back in April, and they got to see that messaging again. Lots of interesting ways to get it out there.
Russel: It’d be interesting to say, “OK, homeowners, here’s the 15 different applications or games they’re likely to play. Every time you go to Home Depot and you buy fencing material, I’m going to serve you up these ads.” See how many, if any, click through. That’s the kind of thing you can do with the new technology. There’s certainly a safety benefit to that, for sure.
Kelee: That’s what we do.
Tracey: Absolutely. Some of the other things we try and get creative with is, contributing to articles that are just more than awareness, but they’re moving into the education component. Really, how are we going to modify their behavior?
If we can get an article or something in next door, or even Angie’s list, or if we’re doing something along the lines where it allows us to elaborate on the message, give them the consequences of ignoring a gas emit, or what happens if you don’t call for your day?
We’re always looking for more opportunities to get that education component out there, and some of that also goes to the homeowner associations, or permitting office at the county level.
If we can leverage like where folks are getting permission to do these activities and insert “Thou shall abide by these state laws before you get your HOA permission or before you get a permit,” I always felt like that would have some good leverage for us as well.
Russel: It’s interesting. There’s a combination of factors here that we’re noodling on. One is the message. One is the vector, how I’m reaching that person, and the third is the targeting, who I’m reaching. All that has to come together. There is so many alternatives for how to do that this day and age. It’s really mind boggling.
Tracey: It is. The idea that, across the country, there are so many pipeline members that have this exact same program and where we have to get out there and reach the audience, we all have the same similar messaging.
I feel like that’s definitely helping us, because whether you’re seeing an ad, when you’re on vacation in Colorado, or if you’re sitting at home in Texas, that ad is going to look and feel somewhat similar across the country. That helps us quite a bit.
Russel: I’m going to pose a different theory. Again, you guys can tell…I know very, very little about this domain. I have the ability to talk about it as if I were intelligent. I owned a piece of property in Houston. It was a commercial property, and it was surrounded on four sides by multiple pipelines on each side, it’s very close to a major interconnect.
I got pipeline communication out my ears, so I just got to the point where I tossed it. I never even looked at it. Now, I also got extremely familiar with it, and I work in that space, so I know what’s in it before I open it. I don’t know if there’s any mechanism. Basically, that’s a tee up for this question. Do you guys think that there’s a risk with over saturation for the message?
Tracey: Absolutely. When we think about all of those pipelines trying to reach you as a homeowner, and they’re just dropping all those letters and leaflets and all that stuff in your mailbox, we’re also seeing that same thing, where we get fatigue with the fire departments.
If you’re trying to engage with and have that engagement with the local fire and emergency responders, they’re also getting that over saturation. We have definitely talked about it. The reason I think TPAA and similar associations are successful is because you take all of that try and reduce the noise. The more we can reduce the noise, the message becomes more impactful.
Russel: That’s right. That’s absolutely right. I’d rather have one message coming to me in a meaningful way with something that’s specific to my needs, with ways to get to additional data if I need it versus just getting saturated.
Kelee: That’s what TPAA does. You’re not ever going to get a brochure from TPAA. Everything that you’re going to see from our organization is going to be via Pandora or soccer or just different methods like that to mix it up, make it more fresh. We don’t send any printed materials whatsoever from TPAA.
Russel: Tell me about why you made that decision, because as long as you all been around, I would assume you started that way.
Kelee: No.
Russel: No?
Kelee: It’s never been, “We’re going to mail you a letter.” It’s always been done in a way, through just advertising. Now, did we advertise in magazines and that sort of thing? Yes, we did do things like that. That’d be as close to paper as we got.
For the most part, it’s going to be television ads. One thing, if you’re watching TV in April, you will see the TPAA ads running all over your local television stations during the National Safe Digging Month.
All of us operators, we have to mail those brochures. We’re required to do that. TPAA helps us in using our resources more in an impactful way. I look at the brochure as a check box, “OK, we gave you everything you needed to know. Let me check that box.”
I just feel like the great thing about TPAA is we’ve got some pretty awesome folks that are part of…Tracey’s a national leader in the public awareness world, with all of her work that she’s done on these revisions for RP 1162, that sort of thing.
TPAA has been very fortunate, because we surround ourselves with these people who know what they’re doing, know what works for their company. I’ll give you an example of what Atmos did one time. We thought we were the sharpest knife in the drawer.
We did our right-of-way mailing just like what you got from those pipeline operators in Houston. We actually had a map on it. It says, “You are near the pipeline, and we showed you where the pipeline was.” We go and survey.
We’re like, “Oh, this is going to be great. We did it.” No, it didn’t move the needle at all. Spent all kinds of money sticking that map on that brochure, and it did not do one thing.
The thing that we’re seeing with our outreach from TPAA is that, we do get to some of these other fun things that, to be honest with you, you don’t have in your regular RP 1162 and damage prevention budget, like doing a Pandora campaign or the billboards.
Tracey just mentioned us being in the Texas high school football championship at AT&T Stadium. We had our messaging running on the big scoreboard. It was on the ribbons all over the stadium. It was on the gap boards.
I think 175,000 people attended that event. Plus, if you were streaming that event, you saw our ads. That way, those are not necessarily things that a pipeline operator on their own are going to be able to afford to do, because they got to mail that brochure, because they have to mail that brochure. [laughs]
Russel: That’s actually super interesting. This is helpful. I didn’t really get that when we first started talking. This is very helpful for my understanding. In effect, what TPAA is doing is you are taking advertising dollars across the industry, and putting them together so that you can reach more broadly the community.
Kelee: Correct. In all kinds of different means. We get to…
Russel: Sure. You just think about advertising and everything has changed in that in the last 20 years. That’s crazy.
Kelee: It’s expensive.
Russel: It’s expensive, and it’s changing rapidly, and things that were effective three, four years ago are not effective anymore.
Kelee: Now, I did a 32nd ad with the Dallas Cowboys, their last playoff game before they were allegedly, hopefully, going to go to the Super Bowl, and I spent $30,000 for 30 seconds. That’s a pretty big chunk of what I pay to go to be a member of TPAA. Throwing $30,000 for 30 seconds can be painful sometimes.
Russel: Spending advertising dollars is always painful.
Kelee: It makes you feel good, especially if I’m home and I’m listening to TV, and all sudden, I hear my TPAA ad coming on and on and on, it’s streaming, it’s digital, it’s everywhere, and it’s really cool to go, “Oh, gosh, we did it. We’re getting that messaging across.”
Tracey: One of the things that I think about, too, for all of us in the pipeline industry is the given ambassadors that we have as our co-workers. There are so many of us in the industry, and maybe, we don’t take it upon ourselves to feel empowered to share those same messages with the public.
Whether I’m in the accounting department or I’m an engineer or any role in the pipeline industry, if I’m sitting on the bleachers and I hear somebody talking about, “Hey, they smell gas this morning at their house.”
Or they see that this pipeline, there’s some digging activity out there, and they’re curious about it. There’s all these little triggers and warning signs that I’m always curious about how well will our co-workers respond to that when they’re out in the wild.
Tracey: If my co-workers, whether they’re like I said, they’re in engineering or accounting or whatever, I always just want to make them the best public awareness ambassador that I possibly can.
I want them to feel empowered that if your neighbor says something about changing out their mailbox while you’re talking to them, you should tell them about the 811 service and say, “Hey, knucklehead, don’t be putting the cable out this weekend. It’s Super Bowl or whatever.”
Russel: My nephew was bragging to me about how he got a little fence business going, and I said, “Oh, you’ve been calling 811?” He goes, “What’s 811?”
Tracey: Oh, no.
Russel: “Young man, we need to talk.” He’s about 16 years old now, so [laughs] I felt bad. I felt proud that he was doing it, and then I felt bad that I’m like, “Yeah, buddy, but you know…”
Kelee: You got more to do. You got more to do. [laughs]
Russel: You don’t know what you don’t yet know.
Kelee: Those are my chalkboard moments I think to me. You have that person that, “I’ve been smelling gas for months now,” and you’re just like, “Oh, my gosh. How did I fail?” How do you not know? It’s because I failed to get that message to you like I should. It’s mind blowing.
Russel: Look, I want to wrap us up, and we’ve been talking about the Texas Pipeline Awareness Alliance. Have you guys spoken to other states? Are you aware of other folks doing this kind of thing?
Is that somewhat unique to Texas? We got a international listenership. I’m trying to help take what you guys are offering and see maybe how people might learn from and apply it if they’re hearing this and thinking it might be of value.
Tracey: Absolutely. The Texas model has been duplicated or tried to across the country. There are some states that have associations that are similar. Indiana has the Indiana Pipeline Awareness Alliance. Kansas has something going. Several states have collaborative efforts that they lean into on how to not only meet compliance, but also do some of these funds supplemental activities.
Those states that have those active, I just encourage them to talk to each other, because I’ve not found a model that works as well as Texas in meeting those challenges for outreach to the whole public, getting those 254 counties. There’s just some best practices out of that Texas Group.
We also know that some of these other associations whether it’s the Gas Association or at the 811 call centers, there are some collaboratives that work well. Whether they’re doing it for the emergency responders or they’re doing it for advertising, there are opportunities out there in just about every state to get plugged into.
If there’s not one in your state, I think that there’s an opportunity there to get the right folks at the table, and you can even create something. Get a hold of Kelee and myself, we’re happy to share our recipe. Definitely not any secrets there we’re not willing to share.
Kelee: Very true. Yes, very true.
Russel: Well listen, thank you, guys, so much for coming on the podcast and talk about what you’re doing. Fun, interesting conversation. For the listeners as always, if you go to the Pipeline Podcast Network website and look up this episode, you’ll be able to find Tracey’s and Kelee’s contact information.
I’m sure they’d be glad to help you if you have questions or interest, or just whatever you can do to help us as pipeliners make the community more aware, and equip them for getting the benefit of what we have to offer and dealing with the risk.
Tracey: You bet. Thanks for having us on here today.
Kelee: Thank you.
Russel: Thanks, guys. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the Pipeliners Podcast, and our conversation with Tracey and Kelee. Just a reminder before you go, you should register to win our customized Pipeliners Podcast YETI tumbler. Simply visit pipelinepodcastnetwork.com/win and enter yourself in the drawing.
If you’d like to support the podcast, best way to do that is to leave us a review. You can do that on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify, wherever you listen. You can find instructions at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com.
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Russel: If you have ideas, questions, or topics you’d be interested in hearing me talk about, let me know either on the Contact Us page at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com, or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.
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