Pool Of Spilled Fuel Located Beneath Reed School

By Andrew Gorosko

After drilling test wells through the concrete floor of the boiler room at the town’s Reed Intermediate School at Fairfield Hills, environmental technicians have found approximately 1,000 gallons of #2 heating fuel trapped there, floating atop the subterranean water table that lies beneath the school.

The trapped fuel is some of the approximately 4,000 gallons of heating fuel that spilled in late December, following a mechanical failure in the school boiler room.

Some of that spilled fuel followed the crushed-stone bedding that surrounds a sanitary sewer line that drains away from Reed School. That spilled fuel eventually surfaced about 1,400 feet away in the spot where the sewer line crosses beneath Deep Brook, a pristine trout stream.

State Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) spokesman Matthew Fritz said February 9 that test wells drilled through the school’s boiler room floor this week indicated that a large “puddle” of the spilled heating fuel, which is about four feet thick, is situated atop the underground water table.

Because oil is lighter than water, it floats atop the water table. The water table lies about seven feet beneath the boiler room floor. In effect, a large puddle of fuel is sandwiched in the area between the water table and the boiler room’s concrete floor.

Because the fuel spill occurred approximately 4,000 feet from the source of the nearest public water supply, the spill does not appear to threaten that supply’s water quality.

Cleanup work, which has continued since the spill was discovered on December 29, has recovered more than 30 percent of the spilled fuel.

It is estimated about 75 gallons of fuel entered Deep Brook, a stream where trout spawn. The fuel spill’s effect on the trout population in the brook will not be known until midyear, when the DEP conducts its annual trout census there. Deep Brook is one of eight streams in the state where the water is clean enough to allow trout to reproduce naturally.

Automatic cleansing equipment is now in use near the stream to prevent spilled fuel from entering the brook.

Some of the spilled fuel is believed to lie within the crushed stone packing that surrounds a five-inch-diameter sanitary sewer line lying approximately 17 feet below the surface of Old Farm Road. The gravity-powered sanitary sewer exits the school and runs eastward beneath Old Farm Road before making a sharp turn and heading northward toward Deep Brook.

Mr Fritz said that the DEP’s spill unit has largely turned over jurisdiction for the continuing cleanup project to the DEP’s Leaking Underground Storage Tank unit.

Environmental workers will be determining exactly where the spilled fuel is located in formulating a strategy of how best to clean up the spill, Mr Fritz said. A pumping system may be installed in the boiler room to extract the spilled fuel from beneath the building, he said.

Mr Fritz said it is unclear how much money it would cost the town to clean up the spilled fuel.

Such expenses have already have run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For comparison, a December 2003 spill of 4,550 gallons of #2 heating fuel at the then state-owned Canaan House at Fairfield Hills reportedly cost the state approximately $1.5 million to clean up. It took several months to clean up that spill. The town has since purchased Canaan House and many other buildings on 189 acres at Fairfield Hills from the state.

Russell Bartley, the town’s environmental consultant, is studying strategies for the Reed School fuel spill cleanup.

The town’s attorneys have been reviewing the various contracts that the town entered for Reed School’s construction to learn if some cleanup costs can be recovered for the town through legal action.

Reed School, which houses fifth- and sixth-grade students, opened for classes in January 2003. Haynes Construction Company of Seymour was the general contractor for school construction.