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."