Five homes remained empty Tuesday morning in the vicinity of a leak from an eight-inch propane pipeline near the intersection of Keyserkill and Stone Store roads at the Gilboa-Broome town line.
The gas leak was reported at about 4:26pm Friday. Initially 116 people were notified of the leak and 13 to 15 families, about 23 people, were evacuated from their homes Friday night.
The pipeline is owned by Enterprise TE Products Pipeline which earlier this year purchased the company that owned the gas line that exploded in Blenheim.
Officials from the pipeline company, in conjunction with the Public Service Commission and the Federal Pipelines, Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the DOT, are working to excavate the damaged pipe.
Gas vapors have been contained to near the leak site, said Rick Rainey, spokesman for the pipeline company.
Once Enterprise TE Products was notified of the leak Friday afternoon, valves in Westerlo and Blenheim were remotely closed from Houston, Texas, and company officials arrived on the scene to manually close valves closer to the leak site.
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Rainey said that the gas remaining in the damaged portion of the line should be burned off Tuesday using a flare stack.
Excavation of the pipe will begin after the gas is burned off, Mr. Rainey said. The damaged portion will be cut out and a new section will be welded in.
The new pipe will be X-rayed, pressure tested and inspected by state and federal agencies before gas flow will resume, he said.
Once the line is reopened, the remaining evacuated homeowners can return to their homes, Mr. Rainey said. Three of the five homes still empty were occupied at the time of the leak.
When the residents can return to their homes will be determined after the line is surfaced.
The pipeline company has been paying to house the evacuated residents at nearby hotels and covering other expenses since Friday evening.
It has not yet been determined how much of the line, which is three to four feet below ground, will be removed.
Pipeline officials still have not seen the damaged pipe, Mr. Rainey said.
“It’s a matter of seeing what we’re dealing with,” Mr. Rainey said.
It is not known how much propane has leaked since Friday afternoon.
Once the damaged pipe is excavated and tested, it can be determined what caused the leak, Mr. Rainey said.
Several residents at update meetings held Saturday and Sunday evenings at the Middleburgh fire house said that digging and other excavation work had been done in the area for about two weeks prior to the leak.
An internal inspection of the line had been conducted in the pipe with a remote device and an integrity dig was being done by a contractor, Mr. Rainey said.
It will be determined what equipment was used in the area of the leak and whether that may have led to the release of propane, Mr. Rainey said.
The pipeline, which dates from 1963 and runs from Watkins Glen to Selkirk, is periodically inspected by air, ground and internally.
With the inspections, “pipelines can last indefinitely,” Mr. Rainey said.
Portions of Stone Store and Keyserkill roads remained closed through Tuesday morning and a warming center was set up at the Blenheim Fire House Friday night until the families were moved to hotels.