Six months ago, on the afternoon of Good Friday, Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline that workers buried 2 feet beneath the ground 65 years ago split open between two homes in a Mayflower subdivision.
Greg Doster, who lived in one of those houses, heard what he later described as “two bangs, two loud pops in succession.”
Within minutes, maybe seconds, of the March 29 accident, he and neighbors were staring at a fountain of thick, black crude oil gushing from the ground.
An estimated 210,000 gallons of oil ultimately flowed through residential yards - leaving the grass as black as charcoal - and along North Starlite Road, then into drainage ditches and a cove of Lake Conway.
Down the street, neighbor Brandi Brown looked out her doorway and sent a picture to her husband Chad’s cellphone with the words, “That’s oil.”
Chad Brown, who had been in a meeting at work, rushed home. Soon, the Browns, like 21 other families in the neighborhood, fled, beginning an evacuation that for many has yet to end.
For the first five weeks, the Browns and their two daughters, ages 3½ and 2, lived with relatives “until we figured out it was going to take a lot longer than we were initially told” to move back home, Chad Brown said Friday. Then, the family moved into an apartment in nearby Conway, where it remains as it prepares to build another house.
Today, most of the evacuated families have yet to return home, lawsuits and government reviews are pending, questions about the safety of the aging pipeline have intensified, and the pipeline remains shut down.
Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co., a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corp., has agreed to buy the Browns’ home, and the sale is expected to close in late October, he said.
Even though government agencies cleared the Browns’ house on North Starlite Road for safe re-entry, the Browns, like many other residents, have refused to move back, even temporarily, despite a statement by Exxon Mobil that it would soon cut off living expenses for some residents.
“I told the guy from Exxon when we were cleared to go back, the only way for me to be 100 percent sure that my family was not affected health-wise was not to go back. We weren’t ever going back even if forced to pay our [own temporary rent],” Brown said.
Exxon ultimately agreed to pay the family’s apartment rent until their house sale closes, he said.
The past six months have been especially hard on the Browns’ older daughter, who didn’t fully understand what was going on. The Browns first moved into the Northwoods house about five years ago, before she was born.
“There were a lot of behavioral issues there for several months,” but the family now calls the apartment “home,” and she’s doing better, Brown said.
The most difficult thing has been “sitting and waiting” for Exxon Mobil - not knowing whether he and his family would or should go back to their Northwoods house and “what decision do I make for my family.” It took 4½ to five months “before we really found out a plan on what they’re going to do.”
Brown believes Exxon Mobil is giving him a fair price on his house.
“In general,” he said, “the first few months they [Exxon Mobil officials] said and did all right things.”
But he added, “The last few months [there] has been pressure to do this, to do that. They want to get things wrapped up. I want to get things wrapped up, but I don’t want to get screwed in the process.”
Exxon Mobil has offered to buy all 22 houses at appraisal prices determined as if the spill had not happened, but it was unclear Friday how many houses the company has bought.
Exxon Mobil spokesman Aaron Stryk said he did not have that information, which he said “changes frequently.”
Stryk said, though, that the oil giant had bought at least two houses, which are among just three not yet cleared for re-entry. “We are still evaluating options for those properties,” he said in an email.
Faulkner County Judge Allen Dodson said the three houses still have oil beneath “the footing of the foundation.”
“One of the options would be to tear them down,” Dodson said. “If Exxon buys them, it would be pretty much up to them. If you ask most people, probably the easiest way to get down and clean the dirt would be to remove the homes … and then build over” or do whatever is decided after the contaminated soil is replaced.
The three houses are one of the two immediately beside the rupture site and two others nearby, Dodson said.
Stryk said he understood that three homeowners had moved back into the neighborhood and that two more planned to return soon.
“I think some [of those returning home] are probably going to take a wait-and-see” attitude toward whether to stay there temporarily or longer, Dodson said. “I suspect one or two of them intend to stay there, and I think I know of one who is planning on leaving eventually.”
Dodson said he expects work related to the spill to continue in the Mayflower area for probably a year.
The number of workers in the area has dropped from a peak of about 750 shortly after the spill to about 20 now.
Exxon Mobil, in a joint news release with the county and the city, said response efforts in the subdivision are now limited to soil work at the hardest-hit houses. The marshy area, or Lake Conway cove, is still being assessed to see what additional work is needed, the release said.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality is still reviewing the first results from sediment tests taken in the cove and other parts of the lake. The agency wants to find out whether oil and any chemicals have reached the sediment.
The Canadian crude oil that was being shipped through the Pegasus pipeline was so thick that Exxon Mobil had it mixed with various chemicals, including the carcinogen benzene, so the oil would flow easily through the pipeline, which runs from Illinois to the Texas Gulf Coast.
Asked if initial tests found oil in the sediment, department spokesman Katherine Benenati said in an email, “We will need to complete our technical review of the results to determine what specific constituents are in the sediment, if any, and determine what the next course of action will be.”
The sediment testing is continuing, she said, and she did not have a timeline for when the analysis will be complete.
Soil and water sampling also continues, Stryk said.
In July 2010, a much larger amount of a similar but not identical type of diluted oil spilled in Michigan and sank to the bottom of the Kalamazoo River. More than three years later, that cleanup still hasn’t ended.
The Mayflower spill has led to two lawsuits pending in Faulkner County Circuit Court, to four in U.S. District Court in Little Rock and to the threat of a fifth federal lawsuit by Central Arkansas Water, the public utility governing Lake Maumelle, the source of drinking water for more than 400,000 central Arkansans. The Pegasus pipeline runs through part of the lake’s watershed.
The most high-profile lawsuit so far is a federal one filed in June by Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel and U.S. Attorney Christopher Thyer. Exxon Mobil has asked a judge to dismiss that lawsuit, and the state and federal governments have opposed that request.
Karen Tyrone, the pipeline company’s vice president of operations, said in a statement six months after the spill that the company remains “committed to restoring the beauty of the Mayflower community” and that workers will remain there “until the job is done.”
Randy Holland, mayor of the town of 2,298 residents, said he was “pleased with the progress we have achieved in the last six months.”
“Yes, the Exxon Mobil oil spill has been a disruption, but we are a resilient community,” he said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/30/2013