According to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), the Colonial Pipeline spill in Huntersville is now turning out to be far bigger than the initial estimates predicted.
The spill was first detected on August 14th coming from a ruptured Colonial Pipeline gas line near Huntersville’s Oehler Nature Preserve. The liquid petroleum gas line that ruptured runs 5,550-miles from Texas, through the southern states, to New Jersey.
Colonial Pipeline said they believed 270,000 gallons of gasoline would eventually spill into the surrounding Mecklenburg County nature preserve.
Now, 3 months later, over 275,000 gallons of gas has been recovered, with an additional 3,000-5,000 gallons being removed every day. Officials now estimate this recovery rate will continue for at least another few months.
Colonial Pipeline’s most recent update states:
“As of Tuesday, November 3, 2020, Colonial had installed 100 monitoring and recovery wells at the site. Sixty of those wells are monitoring wells, and 40 are recovery wells. Neither monitoring nor recovery wells are used for potable water. Residential water well sampling for homes within a 1,500-foot radius of the incident location, which is the monitoring radius established by NCDEQ, are completed weekly. The samples are analyzed by an external laboratory, and there have been no detections of petroleum constituents in any of the samples taken from any of the residential water wells.”
While it’s unknown how far the gas spill has spread, DEQ officials have stated that no gasoline has been detected in any well water yet.