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Annie Baxter
ST. PAUL, Minn.

Water pipes in suspicious bag at MSP

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Officials say a brief evacuation of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Friday morning was spurred by a bag containing materials supposedly used for water filtration.

Terminal 2 was cleared of several hundred people after screeners spotted the items at about 5:30 a.m. Normal operations resumed at 7 a.m.

Airport spokeswoman Melissa Scovronski said the bag in question was being screened by a machine that will trigger an alarm on certain substances. The Bloomington Bomb Squad then investigated.

"What they found in the bag was two PVC pipes capped at either end, with a granular material inside," she said. "The person who owned the bag said it was for water filtration. And then there were some wires in the bag as well, so that of course made it more suspicious."

Scovronski said the materials did not contain an explosive device and the airport will not pursue criminal charges. She said the same man caused a similar problem when he carried the device through an airport in Long Beach, California in 2009.

A TSA spokesperson says the agency will conduct an investigation and determine whether to impose a civil penalty on the traveler.