Workmen Continue Fuel Spill Cleanup at Fairfield Hills

By Andrew Gorosko

In aggressively chasing the approximately 4,550 gallons of #2 heating fuel that spilled from an external heating system at Canaan House at Fairfield Hills earlier this month, workmen have excavated a yawning pit there, measuring approximately 20 feet deep, 75 feet long, and 35 feet wide.

The pit is situated at the northwestern corner of Canaan House, near the town school system’s office entrance to the more than 200,000-square-foot state-owned building. The pit lies below the area where the external heating system formerly stood, as it leaked its fuel during a snowstorm on the weekend of December 6–7. A Fairfield Hills security patrol discovered the spill during the early morning hours of December 8, after the heating system had been leaking for an extended period.

Ever since, workmen have been cleaning up the mess, which has been estimated to cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to remedy.

Large piles of rip-rap, trap rock, gravel, and sand now frame the view of Canaan House, from where a steady stream of heavy dump trucks has been carting off contaminated soil for incineration and cleansing.

After excavation work near the walls of Canaan House is completed, workmen plan to refill the area with crushed stone. They will then excavate what is now a parking lot on the western side of the building to remove contaminated soil from that area.

 Ron Wofford, a spills inspector for the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), said this week that cleanup work has been proceeding well. “Good progress” has been made, he said.

Categorizing the magnitude of the Fairfield Hills incident, Mr Wofford termed it a “significant” spill, which warranted a high level of concern and immediate cleanup action. “We attacked it…We isolated the largest pocket of oil,” he said.

There is no indication that the Pootatuck Aquifer has been affected by the fuel spill, he said. The aquifer, which is a major local underground water source, provides drinking water for two public water supplies and for thousands of individual domestic water wells. 

Tests have shown the areas where soil should be excavated to cleanup the heating fuel that remains in the soil and the groundwater.

Workers are probing drainage lines inside and outside Canaan House where the spilled fuel may be trapped, Mr Wofford said.

Because the mapping for underground utility lines in the area is sketchy, “pipe cameras” have been used to visually check where spilled fuel may be lurking in utility lines underground.

Initial construction at Fairfield Hills started about 70 years ago. The site is underlain with a maze of utility conduits, which may act as diversion courses for the spilled fuel, dispersing it into multiple directions and compounding the complexities of a cleanup.

The town is in the process of buying 189 acres at Fairfield Hills, including 17 major buildings and many minor buildings, from the state for $3.9 million. The state psychiatric institution, which formerly housed up to 4,000 patients, closed in December 1995.           

Mr Wofford estimated that workers have recovered nearly half of the fuel that spilled earlier this month. The tonnage of contaminated material that has been removed from the site was not available.

While excavating contaminated soil near Canaan House, workers have been careful not to disturb the physically “sensitive” northern face of the building’s western entrance, Mr Wofford said. That area likely will have “venting” structures installed to allow the spilled fuel to vent its way out of the soil, he said.

Of cleanup work conducted during the past week, Mr Wofford said, “I don’t think there’s [been] any real surprises.”

Trout Stream

The rapid cleanup work that was done after the spill was discovered helped protect a trout stream tributary of Deep Brook, Mr Wofford said. Some of the spilled heating fuel had traveled about 500 yards through a storm sewer lying beneath Fairfield Hills to that trout stream.

Although it is unknown how much spilled fuel made its way into the trout stream while the spill was underway, current conditions in the brook are good, Mr Wofford said. “The brook looks real good,” he said.

The pristine brook is part of a riverine area that contains the last remaining “Class 1” trout stream in Fairfield County, and is one of only eight such areas in the state, where trout breed naturally.

William Hyatt, DEP’s director of inland fisheries, has said that the problem most likely to occur at the trout habitat would be oil damaging the trout eggs, which now lie buried in the stream’s gravelly bed, waiting to hatch next spring. DEP will not be able to fully evaluate the impact of the oil spill until next summer, when it records the trout population in that area.

Below The Basement

Some of the spilled fuel made its way into the soil beneath the concrete basement floor of Canaan House. Such fuel may be recovered by installing vents or by drilling through the basement floor, Mr Wofford said. A basement room in the building was found flooded with heating fuel following the spill.

It is unclear how much longer soil excavation will continue at the site, he said.

After the excavation near Canaan House ends, the site will be monitored for any subterranean changes which may occur, Mr Wofford said.

First Selectman Herbert Rosenthal has said the town’s purchase of Fairfield Hills from the state will not occur until the town is assured that the state has appropriate protections in place to provide for the fuel spill cleanup. The town has its environmental consultant monitoring the work.

If nothing were done to remedy the problem, the spilled fuel would eventually find its way into the subsurface water table and into area surface waters.

Fleet Environmental Services of Bethel is performing the fuel spill cleanup for the state.