Williams’ public awareness programs prioritize public safety and environmental protection. We engage with property owners, businesses, excavators, emergency responders, public officials and other interested parties to share information about our public awareness programs. We integrate best practices from Common Ground Alliance, a member-driven association committed to preventing damage to underground infrastructure.
Williams’ public awareness and damage prevention steering committee oversees the communication and implementation of public awareness and damage prevention initiatives. We design public awareness programs to enhance safety by increasing knowledge of pipeline locations and safety prevention measures. Employees record supplemental public awareness outreach activities with landowners, farmers, professional excavators and other stakeholders using Williams’ electronic forms and mobile application.
The greatest threat to our pipeline safety is third parties digging near pipelines without proper notification and line marking. Williams sends an annual public awareness mailer to surrounding landowners and community members detailing the importance of calling 811 at least 48–72 hours before the start of any digging project, so underground utilities can mark their lines. We also send a mailer to farming and ranching communities within 10 miles of our pipelines. In 2021, we expanded our mailer distribution to communities surrounding Williams’ three liquefied natural gas storage facilities to provide information on potential exposures. To improve public communications, we redesigned our baseline mailers to enhance readability and promote content retention.
We always encourage individuals to contact our 24-hour control center to report abnormal conditions or emergencies at Williams’ pipelines and facilities. We centralized our numerous control centers to one phone number to make our company more easily accessible to the public. In 2021, we published our new emergency phone number on the Williams website and in company brochures, mailers and handouts.