Reed Intermediate School —

Extent Of Fuel Spill Contamination Probed

By Andrew Gorosko

State environmental officials this week continued working to gauge the physical extent of a heating fuel spill discovered on December 29 at the town’s two-year-old Reed Intermediate School at Fairfield Hills, in which an estimated 4,000 gallons of #2 heating fuel was released.

The spill resulted in approximately 50 gallons of fuel finding its way into Deep Brook, a pristine stream where trout spawn.

By early this week, workers had recovered about 600 gallons of the spilled fuel, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). That fuel was recovered from a containment pit that was dug next to the brook to intercept the stray fuel before it entered the stream.

The incident marks the second major fuel spill to occur at Fairfield Hills in the past year. In December 2003, about 4,550 gallons of #2 heating fuel spilled from an external heating system used at Canaan House, where town offices are located. In that case, the state still owned the Fairfield Hills core campus, which it has since sold to the town. Workers spent several months cleaning up the Canaan House fuel spill.

In each spill, approximately 50 gallons of fuel found its way to Deep Brook before the spills were discovered, according to DEP.

In September 2001, while Reed School was being built, a construction error resulted in a heavy release of sediment from a siltation basin at the site, which caused a fish kill in a trout hatchery along Deep Brook.

Haynes Construction Company of Seymour was the general contractor for the school construction project.

Don Mysling, of the DEP’s fisheries unit, said the Reed School fuel spill’s environmental impact on aquatic life in Deep Brook is yet unclear. In the late spring, the DEP will count the number of trout in the brook, which should illustrate the effect the fuel spill had on the native trout population there, he said. The stream is one of only eight brooks in the state where water is clean enough to allow trout to reproduce naturally.

Following the fuel spill, an oil sheen was detected as far north as the Housatonic River, Mr Mysling said. Deep Brook is a tributary of the Pootatuck River, which is tributary of the Housatonic River.

Reed School was closed to students on January 3, as a precautionary measure until the results of air testing in the school were final. Declared safe for occupancy, the school reopened on January 4.

Investigation

Initial investigation into the fuel leak’s point of origin on December 29 focused on the school’s 20,000-gallon underground fuel tank.

On December 31, further investigation indicated that a mechanical failure, which had occurred inside a basement equipment room within Reed School sometime between December 22 and 29, resulted in about 4,000 gallons of fuel leaking out of the fuel system, said Mark Liano, an emergency response coordinator for DEP’s spill unit.

The fuel leaked into an enclosed concrete trench, which is designed to contain such spills. However, that concrete safety trench has holes in it, which allowed the leaking fuel to drain down beneath the school’s foundation and travel underground until it reached an underground sanitary sewer behind the school.

That five-inch-diameter sewer line is encased in a jacket of crushed stone. When the leaking fuel reached the highly porous crushed stone positioned around the sewer line, the fuel followed the crushed stone downhill. That sewer extends about 1,300 feet from the school to Deep Brook. The sewer crosses under the brook to join another sewer line on the opposite side of the brook.

While passing perpendicularly beneath the brook, the heating fuel, which is lighter than water, rose upward into the stream, creating an oily sheen and foul odor, which was carried downstream, alerting people downriver that a fuel spill had occurred.

Emergency Response

About 30 firefighters from Newtown Hook & Ladder, Sandy Hook, Botsford, Hawleyville, and Southbury responded to the fuel spill on the morning of December 29, said Corey Robinson, the first assistant chief of Hook & Ladder, who served as the firefighters’ incident commander. The firefighters stretched containment booms across the river to isolate the spilled heating fuel.

Mr Liano of the DEP said that as of early this week, only about one-sixth of fuel known to have spilled at Reed School had been recovered. The remaining approximately 3,500 gallons of fuel was ostensibly situated in the area lying beneath the school and alongside the sewer line extending from the school to Deep Brook.

Fleet Environmental Services workers, who were called in to handle the cleanup work, dug a trench near Deep Brook to trap the leaking fuel before it entered the brook, Mr Liano said. 

It is yet unclear what environmental impact the fuel spill will have on trout in Deep Brook, where trout breed naturally, Mr Liano said.

The cleanup project has been underway near the brook around the clock, he said. Workers were using absorbent pads and containment booms to isolate and collect the oil that had made its way to the river.

Cleanup work would involve making test borings to gauge the extent of the contamination problem and then excavating tainted soil, Mr Liano said. A device known as a “geo-probe” will be used to sample subsurface soil conditions, he said.

An alternate cleanup approach would involve drilling wells from which contaminated groundwater would be pumped to extract residual heating fuel from that groundwater, he said.

 The fuel spill does not appear to threaten the quality of underground public drinking water supplies in the area, Mr Liano said.

A pumphouse, which is located near the Wasserman Way bridge that crosses over the Pootatuck River, provides public drinking water to Fairfield Hills, Reed School, Nunnawauk Meadows, and Garner Correctional Institution.

Besides following the course of the buried sewer from Reed School to Deep Brook, the spilled fuel may have encountered other underground pathways and thus have been diverted in other directions , Mr Liano said. “Oil seeks the path of least resistance,” he noted.

Mechanical equipment is being installed near the brook to recover the spilled oil before it enters the brook, he said.

The town has enlisted its consulting environmental engineer to gauge the volume of heating fuel that is trapped beneath Reed School, Mr Liano said.

Unlike the December 2003 fuel spill at Canaan House, which originated outdoors and above ground level in a fuel storage system, the Reed School spill occurred underground. As such, the Reed School spill will require much more subsurface investigation than did the Canaan House spill, Mr Liano said.

Because the Reed School fuel spill occurred on town property, the town will be financially liable for cleanup costs, Mr Liano said. The town would have legal recourse to pursue liability claims in court.

Health Department

Town Health Director Donna McCarthy said the town health department will work as a consultant for the public school system regarding health issues stemming from the fuel spill.

The particular circumstances posed by the spill do not appear to pose any health hazards to Reed School students, Ms McCarthy said. Such hazards concern the quality of the public drinking water supply and the quality of the air within Reed School.

Water quality and air quality testing will continue at the school, Ms McCarthy said.

First Selectman Herbert Rosenthal said January 4 that the town’s attorneys have advised town officials to restrict their public comments about the Reed School fuel spill.

In investigating the spill, the town is reviewing the design of the school, the installation of equipment there, and the supervision of the school’s construction, Mr Rosenthal said.

Mr Rosenthal said it is unclear whether the town would pursue court action concerning legal liability for the technical problems that caused the fuel spill.

The town is reviewing whether its insurance policy provides any coverage for fuel spills, he said.

It appears that most of the oil contamination is on town-owned property, he said.

The town wants to ensure that no more spilled fuel makes its way into Deep Brook, he added.

A prime task now facing the town is determining what specific work is required to clean up the soil and groundwater contamination caused by the fuel spill, he said.

R.W. Bartley and Associates, Inc, of Tolland, the town’s consulting environmental engineer, will supervise the work performed by Fleet Environmental Services and will help to develop cleanup plans, Mr Rosenthal said.

“The level of response was quite impressive…Our volunteers’ quick efforts on scene in the early stages of this situation mitigated what certainly may have been a catastrophic level of damage,” Mr Rosenthal has said of town’s response to the fuel spill.

Schools Superintendent Evan Pitkoff said January 3 that school officials would be meeting with the school’s architect and construction company in investigating why such a spill occurred. The school, which houses fifth- and sixth-grade students, opened for classes in January 2003.

The oil spill does not pose health risks to children attending Reed School, he said.

Its remains unclear how much cleanup work will be needed to rectify the contamination problems caused by the spill, Dr Pitkoff said.

The school will be heated by its alternate energy source of natural gas, instead of heating fuel, in view of the fuel spill, he said.

Dr Pitkoff said he hopes the fuel spill does not cause any more schedule disruptions at Reed School.