Buy Photo Sunoco Pipeline LP has suspended installation of its contentious Mariner East 2 underground pipeline near Exton after about a dozen Chester County households complained the water from their private wells was interrupted or had become cloudy.
The Newtown Square company put five families up in a local hotel Wednesday and provided bottled water to a dozen families near Township Line Road in West Whiteland and Uwchlan Townships, Sunoco spokesman Jeff Shields said.
“We have notified the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the townships, and all appropriate agencies, and will do everything in our power to minimize the impacts to homeowners,” Shields said.
The problems were first reported to authorities on Monday, he said.
The drilling involved the second of three pipelines through which Sunoco is delivering natural-gas liquids such as propane from the Western Pennsylvania shale fields to its terminal in Marcus Hook.
Political, business and labor leaders have touted the $2.5 billion Mariner East project as a major economic boost, but it has also generated fierce resistance from some nearby property owners and environmental activists opposed to fossil-fuel development.
Local officials suspect that nontoxic bentonite clay used as a lubricant during the horizontal-drilling process may have migrated into private wells.
Bentonite drilling mud is the same material used in cat litter.
Sunoco, in its February response to DEP, said it had worked with the public water supplier in the area, Aqua Pennsylvania, to step up groundwater-monitoring efforts, including the installation of a monitoring well near Aqua’s two Hillside water wells, which are about 300 feet from the pipeline route.
“We have not seen any impact on our wells,” she said Friday.