contamination 151 articles

A pipeline failure released more than 8,000 gallons of jet fuel into the St. Mary’s River in northeastern Indiana Sept. 7, and officials warned a cleanup could take several weeks to complete. Bernie Beier, Homeland Security Director for Allen County, Indiana, told The Journal Gazette that an employee of Buckeye Pipe Line Company, which owns the busted pipeline, detected a pressure drop and immediately went to check on the line. The company then shut down the affected pipeline, but not before 8,190 gallons of jet fuel escaped into the river. The spill prompted police officials in the city of Decatur ... Read More

Toxic coal ash from a shuttered Duke Energy plant in Wilmington, North Carolina, was released from a primitive dump as heavy rains from Hurricane Florence lashed the coast. As of Monday, the city of Wilmington was inaccessible by land due to widespread catastrophic flooding in the city and surrounding areas, so Duke Energy and state environmental officials haven’t determined how far the spilled coal ash – enough to fill about 180 dump trucks – has migrated. According to the Associated Press, the toxic coal ash from Duke Energy’s L.V. Sutton Power Station “likely flowed into the Cape Fear River.” With waterways ... Read More

Oil spills on land result in countless tons of contaminated soil being discarded in a landfill, but what if there were a way to treat the spilled oil in a way that benefits the land and eliminates waste? That’s the goal that Targa Resources, a North Dakota-based oil and gas services company, is working toward becoming a reality with a bioremediation system it has developed for oil spills. According to the Bismarck Tribune, Targa has recently completed a bioremediation project on the Fort Berthold Tribal Reservation, which isn’t under the same state and federal regulatory jurisdiction as non-tribal land. The ... Read More

More than 50 years after a massive benzene spill released from a derailed train contaminated a South Alabama community, the federal government has removed the site from a list of one of America’s most polluted places. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that all monitoring wells at the Perdido Groundwater Contamination Site in north Baldwin County have shown levels of benzene to be below 5 micrograms per liter five consecutive years – the target of the cleanup plan and low enough to warrant its removal from the Superfund National Priorities List. Anyone who lived in Alabama in 1965 likely ... Read More

TransCanada Corp. grossly underestimated or understated its spill projections for its existing Keystone pipeline in documents it provided to regulators before the line became operational in 2010. Documents obtained by Reuters show seriously flawed risk assessments for the massive Keystone pipeline, which spans 2,147 miles across the middle of the U.S., connecting Alberta, Canada’s oil fields to refineries on the Texas coast. On Nov. 16, the Keystone pipeline spilled 5,000 barrels of highly toxic tar sands oil in rural South Dakota near the town of Aberdeen. Two other oil spills of about 400 barrels each preceded this month’s spill – one ... Read More

A lawsuit against two oil and gas companies for oilfield cleanup is being revived by a Louisiana appellate court, Law360 reports. The trial for the lawsuit ended in September 2015 with a finding that BP was primarily responsible for pollution at the Sweet Lake Land and Oil Company property. The site was contaminated with chemicals including benzene, and three companies were made to submit a cleanup plan to the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources. The jury decided that two other companies, Oleum Operating Co. and ASKM LC, were not to be held responsible. Those findings are now being reversed. In late May, ... Read More

An oil spill attributed to a transfer error at a Brooklyn fuel depot has released an estimated 27,000 gallons of diesel fuel into Gravesend Bay and the land around it, BKLYNER discovered, noting that the spill and cleanup response were not publicized. Interviewing multiple sources involved in the spill response, BKLYNER reports that the spill started before sunrise on Thursday, March 30, at Brooklyn’s Bayside Fuel Depot. BKLYNER says it was tipped off by video and pictures of the spill’s aftermath and extensive cleanup response it obtained. A representative from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed the ... Read More

Updated estimates show a pipeline oil spill that occurred in western North Dakota in December was three times larger than first estimated, making it one of the largest spills in the state’s history. North Dakota’s spill investigation manager Bill Suess estimates that 529,839 gallons of oil were released from the Belle Fourche Pipeline, more than triple the original estimate of about 176,000 gallons. Estimates could rise again in the future because they don’t include a hillside area of the spill that could contain about another 100,000 gallons of oil. North Dakota’s largest oil spill occurred in September 2013 when pipeline ... Read More

Cleanup efforts continue on a major gasoline leak from an underground storage tank behind a North Carolina service station. According to The Graham (North Carolina) Star, a leak was first detected in a fuel tank storing premium fuel at the Crown gas station in the western North Carolina town of Robbinsville in mid-August. Since then, remediation efforts have removed 2,600 gallons of gasoline from the ground, “enough to fill a 15-gallon vehicle gas tank 173 times,” the Graham Star noted. The cleanup and abatement operations remain ongoing. The leak has contaminated the nearby Tallulah Creek and Cheoah River. “The section ... Read More

Iowa environmental groups are calling on lawmakers for better legislation and regulation of the railroad industry after a Union Pacific freight train hauling ethanol derailed near the town of Graettinger, Iowa, March 10. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) continues to investigate the derailment, which caused some of the train’s ethanol-laden cars to topple into the Jack Creek in the northern part of the state. Fifteen of the cars caught fire and some of them continued to burn two days after the 1 a.m. crash. The derailment and fire also destroyed a bridge running over the creek. Authorities say the ... Read More