MOBILE, Alabama -- Cleanup crews swarmed across Gulf Coast Asphalt Company’s riverfront property Friday, racing to scoop up tens of thousands of gallons of heavy fuel oil before the arrival of Tropical Storm Lee.
With as much as 15 inches of rain predicted over the weekend, officials worried that the thick oil filling roadside ditches and covering a large area of the asphalt company’s property would wash into the Mobile River and the bay. U.S. Coast Guard officials said the agency was working on a contingency plan to deal with the weather.
The asphalt company overfilled a giant storage tank in the wee hours of the morning on Thursday, causing the spill, according to the Coast Guard.
Heavy equipment dug up oil contaminated soil from the property and loaded it onto dump trucks all day Friday. Vacuum trucks sucked oil from roadside ditches and areas where it had pooled at the tank farm. Three skimmer vessels sucked oil from the Mobile River.
Officials with Gulf Coast Asphalt did not respond to calls seeking comment on the cleanup effort.
"A lot of progress has been made in the last 6 to 8 hours with boom placement and maintenance, oil recovery, and oil removal along with sediment removal," the Alabama Department of Environmental Management’s Jerome Hand wrote in an email midafternoon Friday. "Oil-absorbed boom and pads are being carefully placed into clear plastic bags for disposal. Every effort is being made to get all of the product out of the ditches in advance of the projected rainfall."
Water and oil flowing from the company’s property drained into a ditch along the Cochrane Causeway. The ditch flows to the Mobile River, though an earthen dam had been constructed to prevent oil from reaching the river. Friday afternoon, thick oil coated grasses and plants along the ditch.
A half-empty fuel barge remained tied to the company’s dock Friday morning, the empty front end of the vessel riding about 4 feet higher than the stern, which was apparently still loaded with oil.
Tank farms like Gulf Coast Asphalt’s facility on Blakeley Island are required to have containment dikes around each storage tank to prevent oil from spilling into the environment in the event of a tank failure. For unknown reasons, the asphalt company left a rainwater drain valve on the containment dike open, according to the Coast Guard. That allowed the spilled oil to flow to the river and the roadside ditches.
Fuel companies are typically required by law to keep drain valves closed. According to people who work in similar facilities, many firms also keep the drains locked and keep a written log documenting each time the valves are opened to allow rainwater to drain out.
Coast Guard officials said the investigation into why the drain valve was open was ongoing. The valve is now closed.
By Friday afternoon, 33,000 gallons of oil had been removed from the containment dike around the tank, and 54,000 gallons of oily water had been removed form the roadside ditches and the river surface, the Coast Guard said. There was still no official word on how much fuel oil had spilled.
Four backhoes and a small bulldozer could be seen working on the property, digging up contaminated soil and covering some areas with tarps to prevent rain from spreading oil.
A layer of black oil clung to mooring pilings, rocks, sticks and grasses along the affected shoreline on the east side of the river. Barges and tugboats near the company’s dock sported black rings of oil at the waterline, and each vessel had a slick of rainbow-colored oil spreading away from it.
Tim O’Leary, a contractor working with the Joint Information Command set up to handle the spill, said that barges and other vessels would have to be cleaned before they would be allowed to leave the port. It was unclear Friday when the Mobile River would be fully reopened. Thursday morning, the Coast Guard closed an area between the Cochrane-Africatown USA bridge and the McDuffie Coal Terminal.
O’Leary said cleanup work would continue unless weather conditions deteriorated to the point that the safety of the workers was threatened.
