The following editorial appeared Tuesday in the Bellingham Herald.

After dying a quiet death last year, a bill to exempt pipeline information from open records laws has again reared its ugly head in Olympia.

Today, the House Committee on Technology and Energy & Communications will hear about HB 1478. The bill would reduce the public’s right to know about the location of pipelines that run through their communities.

The bill requires the state Utilities and Transportation Commission to provide pipeline information to state agencies, emergency officials and local governments, but won’t allow for maps of better than a scale of one to 24,000 to be released to the public.

Bill sponsors say having too much information available about pipeline locations makes them vulnerable to terrorism.

We understand the concern. Still, we think it’s far more likely that a terrorist will choose to attack a government building, school or shopping center – all easy to find on any Internet map – than an underground pipeline.

Meanwhile, citizens of this community are critically aware of the dangers of the unknown pipelines beneath our communities. The Olympic Pipe Line Co. line ruptured in Whatcom Falls Park in 1999. The rupture killed a teenage boy fishing in Whatcom Creek. When the fuel ignited it killed two boys in the park. Nearly two miles of vegetation along the creek was burned out.

Afterward, many people in our community realized they had never known the pipeline ran through the park, or among housing developments, or through the parking lot of Kulshan Middle School.

Citizens demanded more and better information after the disaster. The Legislature responded by passing a law requiring the utilities commission to create good maps of the Olympic line and others in the state.

To wait a few years and then try to take the information away is an incredible disservice to the citizens of this community and to the memory of the tragedy that occurred here.

Surprisingly, the bill to limit pipeline location information was written by state Rep. Jeff Morris, the Democrat in whose district the pipeline explosion happened, and is co-sponsored by Kelli Linville, a longtime Bellingham leader and state representative from the 42nd District.

We couldn’t disagree more strongly with their support of this bill.

Our community knows as well as any in the nation that public information about pipeline operations is vital to our own safety. It has been more than eight years now since the pipeline tragedy in Bellingham, but citizens here need to continue to be vigilant: vigilant so the oil industry keeps its promises about safety reforms; and vigilant so the industry isn’t successful in getting politicians to keep information from citizens.