Tuesday, December 23, 2014

EPA: 8,000-GALLON GASOLINE PIPELINE CLEANUP TO LAST WEEKS IN BELTON, SC



EPA: 8,000-gallon gasoline pipeline cleanup to last weeks in Belton, SC


Crews use a backhoe to dig soil from around a leaking petroleum pipeline buried about four feet deep near Belton. Passing motorists notified officials of the leak after seeing dead vegetation in the area.(Photo: Tonya Maxwell/Staff)Buy Photo

BELTON – Work near Belton to clean up an estimated 8,000-gallon gasoline leak from a major distribution pipeline likely will continue through December, an official monitoring the rural site said Wednesday.

Passing motorists on Monday reported dead vegetation and a gas odor near Lewis Drive and West Calhoun Road, and crews later found a pinhole-sized leak in the pipe, buried four-feet deep.

Owned by the Plantation Pipe Line Company, the 26-inch diameter pipe runs 3,100 miles from Louisiana to Washington, D.C., and the leak was discovered about a mile outside of Belton, company officials said. It is operated by Kinder Morgan, the country's largest energy infrastructure company.

The pipe was turned off Monday evening, and crews drilled another tap to drain gasoline, said Jason A. Booth, a scene coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency.

"These pipes are old and they're bound to get leaks and cracks," he said. "They can be minor and hard for the transfer station to detect a drop in pressure."
Contractors likely will spend the next two to three weeks removing soil saturated with gasoline from the area.

An unnamed tributary of Browns Creek is about 1,000 feet from the leak, Booth said, and monitoring has shown gasoline has not reached the water. Officials will continue to observe the stream.

All residents in the area are on municipal water, and those lines are unaffected, he said.

The cause of the leak remains undetermined, said Melissa Ruiz, spokeswoman for Plantation Pipe Line Company. No drop in line pressure was detected, she added, and investigators have not determined when the leak began.

"All appropriate agencies have been notified and the company anticipates that there will be no customer impacts," she said in a statement. An investigation into the cause and quantity of the release is under way.

Service was expected to resume Thursday morning.
Plantation Pipe Line is creating an environmental sampling plan in cooperation with the Department of Health and Environmental Control and the EPA, said DHEC spokeswoman Cassandra S. Harris.

Booth, of the EPA, said the company soon will begin drilling holes in the ground at 50-foot increments to determine how far the gasoline had spread.
In South Carolina, the line enters in the Lake Hartwell area and continues through Belton and Spartanburg before heading toward Charlotte.

The same line broke in May at the company's Anderson station during routine maintenance.

Along Lewis Road, two backhoes were among several vehicles working Wednesday afternoon, with rolls of hay serving as a backdrop to the construction equipment. On the other side of the road, set back by a wide front yard is the Jameson residence.

Crystal Jameson, mother of a toddler and an infant, said she didn't notice a gas odor until crews began digging trenches to reach the pipe.

She declined the pipeline company's offer to evacuate her family to a hotel, and she joked that she was unfazed by the noise and the light smell of gasoline near her home.

"I smelled gas yesterday and they said they might punch holes in my front yard," she said. "All I hear all day is my kids screaming. My toddler loves to watch the big trucks. Usually all you hear out here is the cows mooing."