UPDATED: Local Drinking Water Safe After Chemical Spill, Multiple Officials Say

UPDATE: 60,000 Gallons Of Contaminated Water Collected After Chemical Spill

UPDATED: 6:40 p.m., Sunday:

Multiple water providers and government officials in the Levittown area have confirmed the water is safe to drink following Friday night’s chemical spill.

Aqua Pennsylvania, which provides drinking water to Bensalem Township, Bristol Borough, and parts of Bristol Township, has said the water is safe to drink in multiple statements.

“We’re not detecting any of the spill chemicals in our drinking water. That’s because our operations team acted immediately to prevent the chemicals from ever entering our source water,” the company said in a statement.

The Bucks County Water and Sewer Authority, the Township of Falls Authority, the Lower Bucks County Joint Municipal Authority, and Pennsylvania American Water, which all serve the Levittown area, have not placed any restrictions, advisories, or warnings in the wake of the spill.

Several of the water providers have said they will continue testing their supply, but no contamination has been detected.

The Philadelphia Water Department issued a bottled water advisory for part of Sunday, but that lapsed by late afternoon and officials said the city water was safe.

The city issued the bottled water advisory as a precaution because water system intakes along the Delaware River in Northeast Philadelphia had to be opened Sunday to take in water to keep equipment functioning and provide water for the city’s fire department.

At Aqua’s Bristol Borough treatment plant slightly north of the spill, the intakes remained closed throughout the weekend. The intakes have not been open until shortly after the spill was reported, officials said.

On Sunday afternoon, Bristol Borough officials issued a statement recommending residents use bottled water, but Mayor Ralph DiGuiseppe III told LevittownNow.com Sunday evening that the message was precautionary and the town’s water is safe.

“We just got information that there is zero contamination in the plant. Aqua said they are 100 percent confident it is safe,” he said. “They tested.”

Aqua is bringing in water from other facilities to continue providing water to local customers until the intakes are reopened.

Nearly every local grocery store this news organization surveyed was sold out of bottled water by 4:30 p.m.

County, state, and federal authorities remained at the Trinseo Altuglas facility on the Dow Chemical property off Veterans Highway (Route 413) throughout Sunday. A contractor was brought in to help with containment after the leak from Trinseo Altuglas.

Butyl acrylate, ethyl acrylate, and methyl methacrylate monomer were the latex-related chemicals that spilled into the Otter Creek and Delaware River Friday night. A county spokesperson previously said the chemicals are non-toxic to humans at the levels in the waterways.

Original Story:

The two Pennsylvania drinking water intakes closest to the chemical spill that has impacted the Otter Creek and Delaware River have been closed as a precautionary measure.

An Aqua Pennsylvania spokesperson said the Bristol treatment plant’s river water intakes have been closed since workers learned of the hazardous materials spill Friday night.

“Our operations team immediately shut down the intake to our Bristol water system as soon as we learned of the chemical spill, preventing customer exposure to hazardous materials. As a result of their fast action, we are not seeing any of the chemicals from the spill in our drinking water,” the Aqua official said.

The Samuel S. Baxter Water Treatment Plant in Philadelphia, which sits about seven miles down the river from the site of the spill in Bristol Township, shut its intakes after learning of the spill. However, they had to open them during high tide early Sunday to maintain the equipment and keep a supply for city firefighters, according to Philadelphia Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems Deputy Managing Director Mike Carroll.

The city advised customers of their system to use bottled water for drinking and cooking starting 2 p.m. as a precautionary measure. (Correction: This sentence previously said through 2 p.m., but the city advisory starts at 2 p.m.)

There have been no drinking water restrictions in the Levittown area, including by the Bucks County Water and Sewer Authority, the Township of Falls Authority, and the Lower Bucks County Joint Municipal Authority. Aqua has also not placed restrictions and company officials said they were continuing to monitor the water.

Pennsylvania American Water, which serves part of Falls Township, said in a statement that their staff has been monitoring the situation. The company’s Yardley water intakes are 15 miles upstream. Testing of the water supply will continue.

New Jersey American Water President Mark McDonough said his company is monitoring the spill and conducting tests on their facilities that pull water from the Delaware River.

Carroll said the city’s water advisory was purely precautionary as no chemicals have been identified in the water supply. He added that the “health risks are very low if present at all.”

Carroll told reporters at a press conference in the city that butyl acrylate, ethyl acrylate, and methyl methacrylate monomer were the latex-related chemicals that spilled into the waterways. Butyl acrylate, a colorless liquid with a sharp odor, was among the chemicals involved the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

On Friday night, it was discovered at least 8,100 gallons and up to 12,000 gallons of a water-soluble acrylic polymer latex finishing material spilled into the Otter Creek, which drains into the Delaware River on the Bristol Borough and Bristol Township border. The spill occurred at the chemical company Trinseo Altuglas facility on the Dow Chemical property off Veterans Highway (Route 413).

Bucks County spokesperson James O’Malley said Saturday night that the spill is believed to be non-toxic for people, but it could impact fish.

A LevittownNow.com reporter surveyed more than a mile of the river’s shoreline in Bristol Borough and Bristol Township on Sunday morning and no fish die-offs were spotted.

The Bucks County Emergency Operations Center was active as of Sunday afternoon in the wake of the spill.

The U.S. Coast Guard, Bucks County Hazardous Materials Team, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection are leading the response to the incident. Several other local, state, and federal agencies are involved.

A Trinseo official told 6abc Saturday that the spill was caused by a burst pipe.

“It hit the roof of a building, went down a gutter, from the gutter it went to a storm drain, from the storm drains it found another outfall basin, from there it started to leak into the river,” Tim Thomas, Trinseo Altuglas senior vice president of manufacturing and engineering, told 6abc.

Trinseo Altuglas did not respond to a request for comment from this news organization.

Contractors and government officials were seen working at the location of the spill Sunday morning.

A low-flying Philadelphia Police Department helicopter went along the river and circled the Bristol Township spill location and then the Samuel S. Baxter Water Treatment Plant in Philadelphia around 10 a.m.

Large spill containment and filtration systems were near the site of the spill on Sunday morning. Booms were spotted in the Otter Creek near Otter Street and in the river near the site of the spill.

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