Source: http://www.democratandchronicle.com, January 17, 2014
By: Meaghan M. McDermott
A contractor’s mistake burst a storage tank inside a county building at Northampton Park in late December, spilling more than 200 gallons of fuel oil into the basement, where some of it was pumped out to nearby Salmon Creek.
According to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, workers with Samson Fuel overpressurized the storage tank while making a delivery to 304 Salmon Creek Road on Dec. 27, causing about 240 gallons of the red-dyed oil to leak. The oil flowed into the crock for the sump pump, and from there was discharged into a drainage ditch near the seasonal-use building.
Cleanup efforts began the following day, after citizens hiking on Salmon Creek Road noticed the smell and red fluid in the drainage ditch and contacted authorities. Samson Fuel owner Linda Fedele was ticketed by by a DEC officer for not reporting the spill when it happened.
According to DEC, it is likely a small amount of oil entered Salmon Creek, but none had accumulated downstream of the building.
Larry Staub, Monroe County parks director, said while contractors hired by Samson Fuels to remediate the fuel oil spill were working in the basement, they discovered a second area of contamination near what he called a “slop sink.”
That contamination — likely mineral spirits or another petroleum product — was uncovered while workers were drilling holes through the cellar floor to flush out the fuel oil, he said. Monroe County workers have not used those particular products in more than a decade, and Staub said it was impossible to guess when that spill may have happened. Nonetheless, the county enlisted Day Engineering to come up with a remediation plan.
As far as the fuel oil, most of that spill already has been cleaned via a mix of absorbent booms used to skim the oil off surface water in the drainage ditch, flushing and vacuuming under the basement floor and filtering the groundwater before discharging it through the sump pump to a holding tank. According to the DEC, the cleanup was completed on Wednesday.
However, Staub said the groundwater will continue to be discharged into the holding tank for the time being because it is also helping to clear pollutants from the mineral spirits spill.
He said Samson Fuels has been very cooperative and is paying for all cleanup of the fuel oil spill, and that the work for the second spill is being done in-house at minimal cost.
The 973-acre Northampton Park straddles the Ogden-Sweden town lines. It was the source of controversy over the summer when the County Legislature agreed to allow Monroe County Fair and Recreation Association, a private organization, to construct buildings on and use 25 acres of the park 10 days a year. The move prompted a lawsuit by residents, which was dismissed.