Town Planning How To Cleanup Spilled Fuel

By Andrew Gorosko

So far, workers have recovered approximately 30 percent of the 4,000 gallons of #2 heating fuel that spilled last month after a mechanical failure in the boiler room at the town’s Reed Intermediate School at Fairfield Hills allowed the fuel to escape from the building.

Mark Liano, a spills inspector for the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), said January 19 that revised estimates place the amount of #2 heating fuel that found its way into the nearby Deep Brook at 75 gallons, not the previously thought 50 gallons. Deep Brook is a pristine 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.

Fuel that had escaped from the school’s boiler room traveled underground and reached a sanitary sewer line that is surrounded with crushed stone. The seeping fuel entered that crushed-stone packing and followed the sewer line for about 1,400 feet until the sewer passed beneath Deep Brook, where the fuel rose to the brook’s surface and was then noticed.

Mr Liano said that very little spilled heating fuel is now reaching the automatic fuel recovery equipment that is positioned near the brook. Approximately one-half-gallon of fuel is being recovered by that equipment daily, he said. Just after the spill was discovered on December 29, about 60 gallons of fuel was reaching that area daily, he added.

Because the fuel spill is 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, Mr Liano said.

Costs Unclear

It remains unclear how much it will cost the town to clean up the fuel spill, but such expenses may run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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 186 acres at Fairfield Hills from the state.

So far, approximately 1,190 gallons of the 4,000 gallons of fuel that spilled at Reed School has been recovered, Mr Liano said. The cleanup work is no longer in an “emergency phase,” but is now in a “remediation phase,” he said.

Much of the spilled heating fuel is believed to be puddling atop the subsurface water table that lies about seven feet beneath the foundation of Reed School’s boiler room. As much as 2,000 gallons of the spilled fuel may lie beneath the school, Mr Liano said.   

Other 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 runs eastward beneath Old Farm Road before making a sharp turn and heading northward toward Deep Brook.

On January 17, a 15-foot-deep pit was open at the rear of Reed School to allow inspectors to check for any heating fuel leaving the building. That excavation has been refilled.

Cleanup Project

Recovering the heating fuel that lies beneath the foundation of the school’s boiler room and also lies beneath Old Farm Road may be accomplished by drilling wells in those places.

Groundwater would be pumped from those wells and then the spilled fuel would be extracted from the groundwater, Mr Liano said. Such a cleanup project would include drilling wells directly through the concrete floor of the boiler room to extract spilled fuel, he said.

Excavating any large trenches to collect the spilled fuel would be a “last resort,” Mr Liano said.

“We’re going to attempt to recover as much [spilled fuel] as we can,” he said.

Russell Bartley, the town’s environmental consultant, is studying strategies for the cleanup, Mr Liano said.

The town’s attorneys are reviewing the various contracts that the town entered for Reed School’s construction to see if some of the cleanup costs can be recovered for the town through legal action, according to First Selectman Herb Rosenthal.

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.