Consumer watchdogs launch $1M TV ad blitz against controversial Peoples Gas pipeline program

Chicago’s public debate over underground gas pipelines is shifting to the airwaves. 

A coalition of consumer watchdog and environmental groups launched a television ad campaign Wednesday urging state regulators to slash spending by Peoples Gas on its long-delayed, over-budget plan to replace hundreds of miles of aging pipes that deliver natural gas to homes across the city. 

The 30-second spot airing on major networks in Chicago and Springfield slams the utility’s “$13 billion boondoggle” and asks viewers to tell the Illinois Commerce Commission “to shut down these unfair rate hikes again.”

“Your heating bills could double,” a narrator warns in the $1 million ad backed by groups, including the Citizens Utility Board, the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition and the Sierra Club Illinois chapter. 

Those organizations, along with the Faith in Place Action Fund and People for Community Recovery, are hiking up the pressure on commerce commissioners who are expected to issue a final ruling on pipeline spending next month. 

In November, two state administrative law judges recommended the commission allow work to resume on the pipeline replacement program at a cost of $7.2 billion to complete work by 2035. 

The program, originally budgeted at $2 billion in 2007, has already cost ratepayers $3.3 billion, with less than half the work completed. That’s what prompted the commerce commission to halt the program in late 2023 pending a commission probe.

The TV ad, paid for by the pro-clean energy Utility Information Alliance, cites a Citizens Utility Board-commissioned study that suggested Chicago heating bills could double over the next 15 years without a major overhaul of pipeline spending. 

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The utility and labor unions working on the program maintain it’s a matter of critical safety upgrades, and that natural gas remains a more affordable option than renewable alternatives. 

A Peoples Gas spokesman said the groups were “playing politics with Chicagoans’ safety” with the political campaign-style TV ad in an effort “to distract people from what’s true.”

“The truth is that state safety experts and two independent judges looked at Chicago’s natural gas delivery system and determined there is an urgent need to replace rapidly corroding pipes — that date as far back as the 1800s — beneath Chicago streets,” the utility spokesman said. “These experts confirmed what’s been known for years: the safety and reliability of Chicagoans’ heating system will be at risk on brutally cold days like today if the much-needed work is not done.”

But Sarah Moskowitz, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, said “unchecked spending” on the program has fueled record-breaking profits for Peoples Gas and its Milwaukee-based parent company, WEC Energy Group. 

She called their ad buy an “unprecedented” campaign for utility watchdogs.

“Talking to consumers about the way things are, people ask how this is allowed to happen, and I think in a lot of cases, it’s simply because people don’t know about them,” Moskowitz said. “Bringing an issue like this to the forefront is quite an undertaking, and so we thought it was worth going after it on a larger scale so that we can actually try to do something before things get even more out of hand.”

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The commercial is slated to run on major networks through mid-February, when the commerce commission is expected to issue its decision.

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