Colonial Pipeline Update
This evening, Colonial Pipeline had the privilege of providing an update on our response and remediation activities during the Huntersville Board of Commissioners meeting. We appreciate this opportunity to update the community, as we know the incident has caused inconvenience and concern among our neighbors.
We remain committed to regaining the trust of those with whom we’ve been neighbors in this community for more than 50 years. Colonial remains steadfast in our priorities of safety and environmental protection and to keeping residents, regulators and the broader public informed, which includes meeting with North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) twice weekly.
Operational Update
As we shared during the meeting, we recently completed the removal of the impacted pipe segment for metallurgical analysis. Advance notice of this work was provided to public safety officials, as well as impacted area homeowners, some of whom were offered temporary relocation so our operations and related traffic would not disturb them.
Representatives from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), as well as NCDEQ, were on site to observe the pipe removal; the impacted pipe segment was then sent to an independent laboratory for metallurgical analysis.
The analysis is a key step in determining the cause of the release. In fact, the removal of this segment of pipe was not required, as a permanent sleeve had been installed during the initial emergency response phase of the incident. However, Colonial took this additional step as part of its commitment to further assess the condition of the pipe and the cause of the release.
Environmental Update
In addition to operational activities at the site, which will continue over the next several weeks, environmental remediation and recovery work at the site is ongoing. To date, we have installed more than 100 monitoring and recovery wells.
Colonial continues to coordinate all aspects of the remediation with NCDEQ and is working to file our next required report, a Comprehensive Site Assessment, by the January 20, 2021, deadline.
In the meantime, weekly testing of residential drinking water wells within the 1,500-foot radius established by NCDEQ continues. There have been no detections of any petroleum constituents in any of the water supply well samples. Air and noise monitoring continues.
Product Volume Estimates
Estimating volumes in an event such as this is an intricate, highly technical process that requires gathering and analyzing technical data from a variety of sources (e.g., geotechnical, metallurgical, operational, environmental), and it takes considerable time to complete. We are working to collect as much data as possible, and to analyze that data as expeditiously as possible, to ensure the release volumes we share are accurate and verified by multiple models.
We have also engaged third-party experts to provide support to Colonial’s in-house team of experts as we work to revise the estimated released volume.
For additional information on Colonial’s response efforts, please visit our FAQs section, which we will continue to update periodically as a follow-up to questions received.
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