A leak in a Sunoco pipeline off Mount Eyre Road continues to dominate discussion in Upper Makefield Township. The leak from a 2.5-inch crack in a petroleum pipeline was described as a “slow drip” by Sunoco officials. It was discovered in January, but reports of water tasting and smelling of gas came from residents as early as September 2023. Sunoco located the leak in 2025 after consulting records from the 1990s and digging up a section where a dent had been covered with a sleeve decades ago, officials have said. Residents at a recent public meeting questioned whether a six-inch rainfall and subsequent flash flooding could have caused the jet fuel to enter their private wells. State Sen. Steve Santarsiero (D-10) asked Sunoco to provide a copy of its post-flood inspection report, although it is not known if that information has been provided. Residents expressed concern that contractors testing their wells refused to test water from the top of the well. Some of the residents’ wells had visible accumulations of petroleum at the surface. A geologist for Energy Transfer, parent company of Sunoco, explained that the goal of the well testing was to gauge how much of the toxic chemicals are in the water that residents drink, rather than the amount of petroleum in the well as a whole. Eligible households have or will have Point of Entry Treatment (POET) systems installed to ensure the water supply is safe. Energy Transfer also purchased a house on Spencer Road in Upper Makefield to facilitate the cleanup of a jet fuel pipeline leak affecting the well water of area homeowners. The pipeline company said it plans to begin drilling two recovery wells at 108 Spencer Road, which will be used to pull poisoned water from the ground. Meanwhile, local and national elected officials have joined community members’ calls to shut down the pipeline during an ongoing investigation. Updates from Energy Transfer are available on the incident response website. See Upper Makefield Township updates here and updates from neighboring Lower Makefield Township here.
Source: Bucks County Herald; 2/21/2025, WHYY; 2/27/2025 & Bucks County Courier Times; 3/5/2025