Fuel Spill Cleanup to Continue, Spill Response Detailed

Stormwater Division - August 23, 2006        Contact: Keith Huff, 747-6962

Cleanup of diesel fuel that leaked into Bowen Branch Creek will continue at least through Monday, Aug. 28, a city official announced after an inspection of the creek today.

Representatives of the N. C. Division of Water Quality, the city Stormwater Division and Waste Management Inc. this morning inspected each of the four collection points set up to remove diesel fuel in the creek. "The inspection showed that some fuel is still being recovered from the creek," said Keith Huff, the city’s stormwater director. "The collection points will remain in operation through Monday, when we will make another inspection."

No diesel fuel residue has been detected in the creeks that supply the city-county water system, Huff said.

The collection points have been in operation around the clock since they were set up on Thursday, August 17, after the leak was detected.

The fuel in the creek resulted from a loss of 7,500 gallons of diesel fuel that leaked into the ground from a pipe serving two diesel storage tanks owned by Waste Management at 3303 N. Glenn Ave.

The city began receiving scattered reports of fumes on Wednesday evening, Aug. 17. By about midnight it had received enough calls to identify a possible location of contamination and city fire fighters were dispatched to Bowen Branch Creek. They immediately noticed that the creek was contaminated with some sort of petroleum product and called in the Fire Department’s Hazardous Materials Response Team. By 1 a.m. Thursday morning a representative of the city-county Office of Emergency Management was on the scene to coordinate efforts to locate the source of the contamination.

At 4 a.m. representatives of the N.C. Division of Water Quality and the city Stormwater Division arrived to assist with the effort. Meanwhile, Emergency Management contacted A&D Environmental and Industrial Services Inc. in Archdale to begin containing and removing the contamination. At 6:30 a.m. A & D began operating a collection point it set up where the creek crosses under Liberty Street.

Further inspection of the area led investigators to suspect that the contamination was getting into the creek from a 36-inch concrete stormwater drainage pipe that crossed the property of Waste Management. At 10 a.m. the drainage pipe was inspected with a remote-control video camera. The camera revealed that diesel fuel was seeping through joints into the drainage pipe. Waste Management officials confirmed that an underground pipe serving two diesel storage tanks crossed the path of the stormwater pipe. They shut off the diesel pipe and began reviewing their fuel records. The review indicated that about 7,500 gallons of diesel fuel had leaked into the ground over the previous three to seven days.

Officials with Waste Management then assumed responsibility for the cleanup. At about 11:30 a.m. they called in Shamrock Environmental Corp. in Greensboro, which took over the recover efforts started by A&D Environmental. Shamrock set up four collection points along Bowen Branch Creek to remove diesel fuel in the water. At each point a floating boom was placed across the creek to contain diesel fuel floating on the surface. The contaminated water that collects at the boom is sucked out to a tanker truck. Shamrock also excavated contaminated soil around the leaking diesel pipe.

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