‘Our lives have been upended’: Bucks Co. residents call for shutdown of Sunoco pipeline

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Upper Makefield Township residents are still grappling with the impact of a leak from a Sunoco-operated pipeline that tainted six wells with jet fuel.

Local and national elected officials have joined community members’ calls to shut the pipeline down pending an ongoing investigation by Sunoco and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, which regulates the pipeline.

At a meeting Feb. 13, Bryan Lethcoe, director of the southwest region at PHMSA, said regulators “determined that there is sufficient information to support the operational status of the pipeline.” Representatives from Sunoco and its parent company, Energy Transfer, said there have been no other leaks detected, and the company has completed several digs to check on other repaired sections of the pipeline.

Ahead of a Thursday night meeting with representatives from Sunoco and its parent company Energy Transfer, members of a community task force that formed to advocate for residents said they are concerned about the extent of the contamination that’s been detected so far, and the company’s attempts to “minimize this situation.”

“They keep repeating that six homes have been impacted, when in reality, so many more homes have been impacted,” Sarah Baicker, Upper Makefield resident and member of the task force, said. “And I mean that in terms of homes with contaminated water, homes that are finding elements of jet fuel in their water. Sunoco is insisting on six, even though we know for a fact there are significantly more than six. They just have levels that are low, so Sunoco is just choosing to discount them.”

Baicker and Kat La Hart, another neighborhood resident and member of the task force, each said independent testing of their households’ water supply found MTBE, a gasoline additive, in the water at levels below the statewide health standard for drinking water. They said the contamination is a concern for impacted households in the neighborhood.

“It isn’t only six of us,” Baicker said. “Our lives have been upended many of us, whether or not we’ve tested for above statewide drinking standards for benzene in our water, and it’s very unfortunate that Sunoco continues to beat this same drum, which is not only just not true, but just also, you know, almost offensive, I think, to those of us who are going through this.”

Residents with the task force have spoken with neighbors and compiled testing results to create a map showing what they say is the extent of the leak’s impact, which stretches beyond what the company designated as the impacted area.

WHYY News reached out to Energy Transfer for an interview. A company spokesperson referred to the latest update published on its incident response website.

As of Tuesday, Energy Transfer said third-party consultants the company has hired have performed 332 water tests in the Mt. Eyre neighborhood, some of which were second-round tests. Results are in for 256 of those tests, and the number of wells with light non-phase liquid petroleum (LNAPL) or with other toxic chemicals above statewide health standards remains at six.

All six of those homes and other eligible households have had Point of Entry Treatment (POET) systems installed to ensure the water supply is safe, the company said in a statement published Tuesday

Energy Transfer said they are continuing to investigate previously repaired portions of the Twin Oaks Discharge pipeline, which spans more than 100 miles from the Twin Oaks Terminal in Aston, Pennsylvania, to Newark Terminal in Newark, New Jersey. In an update published Tuesday, the company said they have found no evidence of any other leaks.

“Based on all of our efforts to date, we continue to narrow the potential area of impact,” the company’s statement reads. “We have now begun the process of performing a second round of tests for properties within the narrowed impact area.”

Sunoco is working with DEP under the Act II remediation process to clean up the leak.

La Hart said residents plan to speak at tonight’s meeting to continue demanding the pipeline be shut down until Sunoco and PHMSA complete the investigation.

Residents are also expressing concerns about testing procedures and long-term water supply solutions.

“We’ve all witnessed and have documented video footage where there’s discrepancies [in testing], and they’re doing this differently house to house, and that information has been shared with the DEP,” she said. “We’ve actually had a lot of cases where there’s differing test results from what Sunoco’s team GES is doing, and with the independent parties that residents have hired.”

La Hart said other concerns include the cleanup of the neighborhood, soil contamination and the lack of a “proactive” response emergency plan from the company.

Sunoco said it is providing carbon filtration systems to residents within a designated impacted area. But La Hart said the filtration systems are a “band aid,” and residents, along with township officials, want a more long-term solution for clean water supply.

Both Baicker and La Hart said they have installed carbon filtration systems for their water, paid for by Sunoco, since they are in the designated impact area. But they still worry.

“I am confident that my water is safe right now,” Baicker said. “But systems break, the power could go out. These are things that I didn’t have to worry about … 16 plus months ago that now I have to think about all the time.”

La Hart said she still has concerns about soil contamination as well, and how it could impact her children who play in the backyard, the chickens her family keeps on the land, or the safety of the vegetables from their garden.

A fact sheet published by the Pennsylvania Department of Health on Thursday is a start to answering some of the health-related concerns, La Hart said, but it’s not the full picture.

“We’re grateful for that little bit of guidance,” she said. “But we have no idea what’s in our grounds, and I think that’s really concerning to each one of these residents.”

The leak was identified by Sunoco on Jan. 31, after residents reported smells of gasoline to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection several weeks prior, and the state agency requested that the company and PHMSA investigate. The pipeline was shut down until Feb. 2, when it was reactivated with PHMSA approval after repairs were completed.

On Feb. 13, PHMSA issued a Notice of Proposed Safety Order, requiring Sunoco to operate the pipeline at 20% reduction in pressure and improve its leak detection system, among several other corrective measures. According to its preliminary investigation, PHMSA found that the leak had been going on for at least 16 months. Residents reported smells of gasoline in their water as far back as September 2023.

In its Feb. 19 response to the Notice of Proposed Safety Order, Sunoco said “there is not sufficient evidence at this time to conclude how long the Affected Pipeline was leaking,” so the finding that the leak was going on for 16 months “cannot be stated with any degree of certainty.”

For residents, the issues Upper Makefield residents are dealing with in terms of the leak and what they said is the lack of a speedy detection could impact others along the pipeline.

“This could be any neighborhood along the pipeline. And this isn’t just about us,” La Hart said. “It’s about everybody, and I think that’s what we want to get across today.”

Community members can attend the meeting Thursday night in person at 7:30 p.m. at Sol Feinstone Elementary School, 1090 Eagle Road. Video of the meeting will also be available on the Upper Makefield Township website in the following days.

Sunoco is currently providing bottled water to affected residents. The company has set up a community support center at Bucks Pump Station at 1798 Dolington Road, Washington Crossing, where people can pick up bottled water and access general information.

The company also established a 24/7 hotline. Residents can call 877-397-3383 or contact the company via email at uppermakefieldresponse@energytransfer.com.

Energy Transfer has a history of pipeline safety violations in Pennsylvania, including an explosion in the western part of the state in 2018. The company was held criminally responsible for dozens of violations during the construction of the Mariner East pipeline.