Cleanup winding down for Tuscarawas River
Three-week effort follows oil spill in Barberton waterway earlier this month
Efforts to clean up an oil spill in the Tuscarawas River discovered July 5 are paying dividends — some unanticipated, like a sunken fuel tank near the Barberton wastewater treatment plant.
The tank was removed Wednesday morning by Eco-Maxx, a company working with Noble Oil Services Inc. on the spill, as cleanup efforts wound down for the three-week effort.
“We’re in the process of closing our major response,” said George Bower, vice president for risk management with Noble Oil.
The result, he told participants in a meeting last week with the Ohio EPA, ODNR and Barberton city officials, will be a river in better condition than it was before the spill.
Wrapping up three weeks on the Tuscarawas River
The incident occurred when Noble Oil Services was transferring oil from a tanker truck to a rail car at a property on Snyder Avenue.
Bower said oil collected in the cleanup operation has declined since removal efforts began and the four booms used in the system will be reduced to two.
Those remaining two stations, one at the original point of release near Snyder Avenue and the other about four miles downriver near Center Road, will continue to be monitored. When nothing is collected for a couple of days, the effort is expected to conclude after Ohio EPA approval.
“I’m estimating it will be about two weeks,” Bower said.
Assessing the toll of Tuscarawas River spill
During a July 20 meeting at the city’s wastewater treatment plant, officials from Noble Oil, the Ohio EPA, Eco-Maxx and city officials discussed the state of cleanup efforts.
At Monday’s Barberton council meeting, Councilwoman Carol Frey said attendees at the Thursday meeting were told about 15,000 gallons of skimmed water had been removed from the river. Her discussion can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=66ITEQuP_5E, starting at the 45-minute mark.
Animals affected by the spill have been cared for and cleaned up, with no recent discoveries of contamination, she said.
Barberton Mayor William Judge said Tuesday that the spill had no effect on the city’s water supply.
“This has not and will not affect our drinking water,” he said.
Where did the oil go?
In the 4.5-mile cleanup area, oil from the 600-gallon spill was found on wildlife, vegetation and the river’s surface. Four stations with booms collected oil traveling downstream.
Because the river is so shallow in spots, some of the oil collected in the vegetation, Bower said. The oil was removed using absorbent pads designed to soak up oil, not water.
“We had as many as 17 people at a time walking down the river in waders doing a manual cleanup of the surface of the water,” he said.
Contaminated vegetation was removed or cleaned up, and vacuum trucks pulled water from the river, separating the oil.
“We collected thousands of gallons of water with the oil and siphoned off the oil from the water,” he said.
A costly cleanup effort
Bower said the bills are still coming in for the Tuscarawas River cleanup, but it won’t be cheap.
“It’s well over six figures,” he said. “We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Judge said Noble has been a good corporate citizen during the cleanup.
“Their representatives have been very forthcoming, sharing information (and) being on-site, recognizing that they have to clear the area up,” Judge said. “I think they have done an amazing job of attacking this on the cleanup effort.”
Bower said the fuel tank and tires found nearby weren’t anticipated, but not all that unusual.
“It’s one of the things you find when you do cleanups like this,” he said. “In a river, you often find debris at the bottom. We’re hoping there’s no oil in it.”