How Oxford's drinking water avoided a contamination catastrophe

It was a normal day for Tim McLelland when he got a call that helped avert a potential disaster.

McLelland, the groundwater protection manager at Hamilton to New Baltimore groundwater consortium in Southwest Ohio, receives plenty of random phone calls, many of which involve neighborly disputes or exaggerated claims. But this particular call stood out.

“When the lady called me and said ‘I got a crude oil pipeline sticking out of my backyard in the creek,’ I didn’t believe it,” McLelland said. “I thought maybe it’s a natural gas line.”

When he checked the maps, he realized she was right: an exposed crude oil pipeline ran through Seven Mile Creek, posing a significant risk to the well fields in that area that supply Oxford’s drinking water.

McLelland said he knew he needed to investigate the matter. When he visited the site the following day, he was met with a sign that read: “Warning Exposed Crude Oil Pipeline” from Mid Valley Pipeline Company.

According to federal regulations from the U.S. Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, oil companies are not required to rebury or cover pipelines if they are exposed. Instead, they are only required to monitor the pipelines, assess environmental hazards and post a sign indicating the exposure.

“I thought to myself, ‘Man, that’s a crazy rule,’” McLelland said. “[The pipeline] was buried underground, but now it’s sticking up out of the creek. If a boulder comes along and hits that pipe, we’re screwed.”

After talking with the woman who noticed the exposed pipeline, McLelland learned she had tried to contact the Ohio EPA and Department of Natural Resources about the situation, but no progress had been made.

Knowing he needed to take action, McLelland worked with Andreas Eddy, the water plant manager in Oxford, to notify the Ohio EPA about the situation in May 2023. At the time, two fallen trees were overlying the pipeline, which could’ve been deadly had they breached it.

Before writing the letter to the EPA, Eddy contacted Mid Valley and was told that an engineer would assess the situation. He later received a follow-up call from a company representative.

“He stated that Mid Valley has extensive records of this particular section of pipeline,” Eddy wrote in the letter to the Ohio EPA. “He told me the pipe is in good condition for its age and that the corrosion rate was normal. He assured me that this situation was low-risk. I kindly disagreed with him.”

They soon discovered the Ohio EPA has no regulatory authority over the pipeline industry unless a spill occurs. In that case, they can assist with the cleanup efforts.

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McLelland researched similar incidents of spills occurring from the same pipeline, including one in 2014, when 20,000 gallons of oil spilled in Colerain Township, contaminating a constructed wetland and nature preserve. The full cleanup effort of the preserve took five years.

Jonathan Levy, associate professor and director of the Institute for the Environment and Sustainability, said that while spilled oil would float on the top of the water, induced infiltration wells could potentially pump contaminated water into the groundwater system if not shut off in time.

“The travel time to go from [the pipeline] down to [the well field], that’s only a few hours,” Levy said. “So within a few hours, you can have oil in the creek here next to the well field, and if the wells are pumping and inducing infiltration from the creek into the groundwater system, then we’re talking about a much shorter travel path.”

The specific pipeline crossing Seven Mile Creek is over 74 years old and runs about 420,000 gallons worth of oil per hour. The nearest shutoff valves are 16 miles apart, meaning if the valves were shut off following a spill, a maximum of approximately 1.4 million gallons of oil could be spilled if the pipeline weren’t patched.

Knowing the potential for disaster from this pipeline, McLelland sent a letter to the company expressing concern about the pipeline's proximity to drinking water sources and asked for “open and transparent dialogue.” After a month of waiting, he received a call from the company saying, “We appreciated the tone of your letter, we’ll agree to meet with you.”

Practicing mitigation through spill drills

After initial discussions, McLelland convinced Mid Valley to conduct a “spill drill” in the region. In August 2024, over a year after McLelland was notified of the exposed pipeline, the company sent representatives from its headquarters in Longview, Texas, to its office in Hebron, Kentucky, to conduct the drill with its staff and McLelland.

A spill drill is a simulated emergency exercise designed to better prepare for a potential oil spill. The procedures include a scenario simulation, communication protocols, mitigation strategies, response, cleanup and post-drill evaluation.

“They were basically making fake 911 phone calls saying ‘we had a spill … along Seven Mile Creek, it’s potentially going to impact water supplies downstream [and] we’re in the process of notifying water suppliers,’” McLelland said. “The whole drill was amazing; amazingly done and very professional.”

On Sept. 5, 2024, McLelland’s birthday, Mid Valley completed their promise to rebury the pipeline crossing Seven Mile Creek by covering it with a Submar mat, a concrete system meant to prevent further erosion and protect the pipeline.

The Submar mat that now covers the oil pipeline. Photo provided by Tim McLelland

“The rules say they don’t have to [cover the exposed pipeline], but they did it anyway [and] spent the money to do it,” McLelland said. “They didn’t have to do a spill drill with us, either. They didn’t have to take our information down and consider it a risk, but they saw it [and] they realized that this was a concern.”

McLelland said he is glad he took a professional approach in contacting the company and communicating with understanding rather than hostility. He believes the open and collaborative approach is what eventually helped the situation come under control.

“Overall, I felt like it was a huge success story to mitigate disaster,” McLelland said. “We essentially kept a disaster from occurring in our communities, both Oxford and everything downstream: Hamilton, Fairfield and everything down to the Ohio River.”

smith854@miamioh.edu