Two women who live near an ExxonMobil pipeline that ruptured last week and spilled thousands of barrels of oil in central Arkansas filed a federal lawsuit against the company on Friday.

The class-action complaint from Kimla Greene and Kathryn Jane Roachell Chunn comes a week after ExxonMobil Pipeline Co.'s Pegasus pipeline ruptured in Mayflower, about 25 miles northwest of Little Rock. Crews are still working to clean up oil that spewed onto lawns and roadways and almost fouled nearby Lake Conway.

The women are seeking money to make up for "a permanent diminishment in property value," according to the complaint. Their complaint says the women are bringing their lawsuit on their own behalf and for other people who live near the pipeline in Arkansas.

Glacial ice in the Peruvian Andes that took at least 1,600 years to form has melted in just 25 years, scientists reported Thursday, the latest indication that the recent spike in global temperatures has thrown the natural world out of balance.

The evidence comes from a remarkable find at the margins of the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru, the world’s largest tropical ice sheet. Rapid melting there in the modern era is uncovering plants that were locked in a deep freeze when the glacier advanced many thousands of years ago.

Dating of those plants, using a radioactive form of carbon in the plant tissues that decays at a known rate, has given scientists an unusually precise method of determining the history of the ice sheet’s margins.

A Federal Aviation Administration no-fly zone is in place over Mayflower, Ark., where a ruptured pipeline leaked thousands of barrels of oil into a residential neighborhood.

The temporary flight restriction has been place since Monday, according to the FAA website. Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman for the FAA, said it applies only to aircraft operating below 1,000 feet above the ground.

Mr. Lunsford said local disaster response officials requested the restriction on flights because they are using "at least one" helicopter to move crews and to spot oil that can't be seen from the ground.

"The pilot of the helicopter needs to be able to move about freely without potential conflicts with other aircraft," Mr. Lunsford wrote in an email. He said similar restrictions are regularly put in place when aircraft are used in disaster response.

U.S. pipeline regulators on Tuesday ordered Exxon Mobil Corp to take necessary corrective action for its ruptured pipeline that spilled thousands of barrels of crude oil into a small Arkansas housing development last week.

The U.S. Transportation Department's Pipeline and Hazardous Safety Administration's corrective order said Exxon estimated that 3,500 to 5,000 barrels of crude spewed from the breach. Exxon had so far only said publicly that it had recovered 12,000 barrels of oil and water.

 

"The cause of the failure is still undetermined and the investigation is ongoing," PHMSA's order said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Arkansas launched an investigation into the cause and impact of the rupture, just as forecast rain was expected to complicate the cleanup.