Huntersville Honors Teens Who Discovered Massive Pipeline Leak

HUNTERSVILLE, NC — Huntersville town leaders honored two teens with the "keys to the city" this week after reporting their discovery of a massive pipeline gas leak last fall found while riding all-terrain vehicles.

The underground gasoline pipeline failure discovered in August 2020 off Huntersville-Concord Road in Huntersville released more than 1 million gallons of gasoline.

An estimated 800,000 gallons of the 1.2 million gallons released had been recaptured as of last week, Commissioner Lance Munger said during the town board meeting at the Huntersville Recreation Center Monday evening.

Observant local teens Walker Sell and Owen Fehr discovered the spill when Colonial Pipeline mechanisms for monitoring for such a disaster did not, Huntersville Mayor John Aneralla said.

SEE ALSO: Huntersville Pipeline Spill 4 Times Worse Than Initially Reported

"When Colonial looks at their pipeline, they do it from the air, and they do it once a week," Aneralla said during the meeting. "What we learned in this is that two days before two high school kids came upon the pipeline on their ATVs, they had flown over and did not detect anything. Fortunately, two high school guys — Walker and Owen — came upon this leak and noticed it," he said.

"If not, we would at least would have gone another five more days of leaking before the plane would have come over and maybe seen the vegetation was decaying," he said.

“We smelled something as we drove by, and it got worse and worse as we drove past it,” Sell said, WSOC reported. “As we drove back, we saw it. We were right on top of it.” The teens then made sure the fire department was alerted about the spill.

"We've wanted to thank them for many, many months now because it could have been a lot worse," Aneralla said.

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