Gasoline Cleanup Nears End in Malvern

A weeklong cleanup of spilled gasoline in Malvern is believed to be nearing its conclusion after a leak Saturday that shut down roads and disrupted business operations.

A defective gasket at the Exxon Mobil terminal, located on South Malin Road, spilled approximately 5,300 gallons of gasoline onto the nearby streets and other surroundings, according to reports from Philly.com and 6ABC. An employee from Buckeye Partners LP, the facility that owns the Exxon, discovered the spill around 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. Fire departments and cleanup crews were immediately dispatched to the scene.

The gasoline travelled northward for miles past the scene of the leak, eventually stopping at Birch Road. During its flow, the gasoline entered storm drains, requiring days of subsequent cleanup by Lewis Environmental, the contracted company for Buckeye.  According to Main Line Media News, the affected sewer runs northward from the company, travelling under Lancaster Avenue and downhill along North Malin Road until it reaches a stream tributary.

The gasoline did not enter Little Valley Creek, which had been a concern because of its close proximity to the stormwater system.

“The main reason that we were out there was to oversee the containment before [the gasoline] got into the waterways from the storm drains, and it was contained,”  said Deborah Fries, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. “Little Valley Creek, an important nearby stream, was not impacted at all.”

“At this point, we’re not seeing any serious environmental impact.”

But the gasoline did saturate a nearby field, which was originally set aside as a retention center from highway runoff, according to Fries. Since the incident, roads on Business Route 30 and Malin Road have been closed at various times so Lewis Environmental, the contract cleanup crew for Buckeye, could remediate the damages, including the affected soil.

The blocked road work lasted into Sunday afternoon, and roads additionally had been closed from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. from Monday through Thursday.

Terry Woodman, East Whiteland Township Manager, said that the crews expect to complete the damage control by Friday.

“The pipe was fairly easy to decontaminate because it's metal,” Woodman said. “Now they’ve been removing the soil in the swale and in the field that may have had the remnants of the gasoline on it.”

Because of frequent thunderstorms over the past few days, the Lewis Environmental crews have been taking additional precautions, Fries told Malvern Patch. The crews stationed hay bales and vac trucks near the roads, but Fries was unsure of whether the storms delayed the remediation process.

“[Gasoline] is lighter than water... It floats to the top,” Fries said. “They’ve had vac trucks on standby if anything looks like it was going to overflow.”