Digging Up The Streets

There has been a lot of street construction going on in Sea Cliff.  There is excavating equipment that digs a trench in the street then men are working in the trench, then the excavation is filled in and asphalt fills it all in.  Turns out they are replacing natural gas lines that one of the workers told me, were installed in the 1950's and are getting old. I was driving down the street and saw these old cut up gas lines covered with dirt and had to stop and see them close up.  You can see the filled up trench in the road, to the right.

Here is a closeup of a group of the old gas pipes.  If you look at most of these, they are cut off clean with a saw and you can see that the steel looks pretty solid. But the pipe at the very top has a ragged end to it that doesn't look good.

I don't know what this pipe was connected to, but how could this pipe not be leaking gas with the ragged end showing?  I will show you a couple of photographs of what this pipe is being replaced with tomorrow.