Unexplained PFAS Contamination At Petroleum Spill Site Mystifies Environmental Regulators

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is continuing to investigate an unexplained source of per-fluorinated compounds (PFAS) contamination that may be associated with the deployment of a fire-fighting compound in response to a major gasoline release by the Colonial Pipeline system on August 14, 2020.  The Colonial Pipeline, which spans 5,500 miles from Houston, Texas, to Linden, New Jersey, runs through a number of southern and mid-Atlantic states, including North Carolina.  The active pipeline delivers an average of 100 million gallons of liquid petroleum products each day.  On August 14, 2020, a leak in the pipeline resulted in the release of approximately 1.2 million gallons of gasoline into the environment near the town of Huntersville, North Carolina.  The release was the largest onshore gasoline spill in the United States in over 20 years and in connection with Colonial Pipeline's emergency response to that release, Colonial Pipeline