Delco is starting to stink.
Literally
First you had the mysterious gas odor that first popped up along Route 291 in Ridley and Chester two weeks ago. It eventually wafted over large parts of western and central Delaware County.
That eventually dissipated, but it returned this week, with another pungent, petroleum smell descending on the area, sparking another wave of calls to the county 911 Center.
Some people were reporting being sickened by the fumes.
In both cases, Emergency Services boss Tim Boyce dispatched crews, but they were unable to detect the source of the problem.
If that was enough, just for good measure, Monday night a Sunoco petroleum pipeline valve station sprung a leak in Middletown, spraying a gas mist over the area and forcing the county to ask residents in the area, including the large apartment complex next too, to shelter in place.
Officials stressed that this is not one of the pipelines involved the controversial Mariner East project.
Boyce is fed up.
He went to the weekly meeting of Delaware County Council Wednesday and asked them to launch a formal criminal complaint into all these instances.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the pipeline leak is that Boyce says the county was never directly notified of the leak. They received calls from neighbors and when a county got there, a team from Energy Transfer/Sunoco was already working to fix the leak.
That should not happen, and only reinforces longheld complaints from pipeline foes that the company remains unresponsive to their issues, and fails to adequately notify residents and county officials when there is a leak or other problem.
On Tuesday we led the paper with all these problems, calling it The Big Stink.
After Boyce's appearance in front of council, we're back on it today, with another front page.
This one notes the efforts of Boyce and others to get to the bottom of these problems:
The result?
They're raising a stink.
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