Environmental Impacts from Largest MTBE Release in History

ABSTRACT: A gasoline pipeline owned by Explorer Pipeline Company ruptured leaking methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), a gasoline additive, into a creek and lake that the city of Dallas used as a water source. Because of the contamination, the city had to build a pipeline (nine feet diameter, two miles in length and in ten weeks time) to another lake, at a cost of about $9 million. The volume of release was estimated at 1.6 million gallons of gasoline containing MTBE at 9-11% per volume. Thousands of soil, water and groundwater samples were taken to track the MTBE plume as it moved from the spill site, though 30 miles of creek and throughout a lake containing 750,000 acre-feet (244 billion gallons) of water. Five years have passed since the spill and MTBE remains throughout the groundwater system in the drainage basin primarily along the 30 miles of creek. The paper focuses on the detailed tracking of all the sampling data and the fate and transport processes that affected both the surface and ground water plumes.