SALT LAKE CITY — Chevron Corp. has spent $75 million to clean up environmental damage caused by two oil pipeline leaks in 2010, health officials said.
Costs will continue to mount as remediation goes on and extensive water and soil sampling starts Aug. 23 at dozens of spots along Red Butte Creek, the Deseret News (http://bit.ly/pEDNLE) reported Thursday. "We’re pretty sure all the oil has been cleaned up, but you never know," said Rolf Larsen, an environmental health scientist with the Salt Lake Valley Health Department. "Visually, you don’t see anything, but this will help determine what is left to do." Larsen said there are concerns high spring flows in the creek loosened oil residue that had been clinging to large rocks. He provided an update Wednesday to concerned citizens gathered at the 2011 Salt Lake Countywide Watershed Symposium. The tests will be done to detect oil compounds and specifically known carcinogens, he said. Recent sampling has shown "very few detections" of petroleum contaminants, and the difficulty is determining whether those are from the spills or from normal urban runoff, he said. John Whitehead, assistant director of the state Division of Water Quality, said rainfall and other events continue to trigger reports of oil odors in the area. Larsen said residents remain upset and are concerned about their children and pets playing in and near the creek. Children probably should not be playing near any creek that contains urban runoff, he said. Federal regulators determined 10 hours passed in June 2010 before Chevron discovered the leak in a 10-inch pipeline that delivers crude oil 182 miles from Rangely, Colo., to Chevron’s Salt Lake City refinery. The leak occurred in the mountains near the University of Utah and sent 33,000 gallons of oil into Red Butte Creek. About 300 birds were coated in oil and had to be cleaned at Utah’s Hogle Zoo. Fewer than 10 died. The city decided to stop the oil spill at Liberty Lake and use it as a collection point. The lake was drained, dredged of contaminated sediment then lined with a protective concrete barrier and rock wall before it was reopened 11 months later. Larsen said all the fish in the lake died, as did large, mature trees at the spill site and aquatic insects that fish depend on to live. Chevron was fined $423,000 after regulators determined the oil company needed better leak detection safeguards. There was another accidental release on the same pipeline of about 500 gallons just six months later. Officials blamed a frozen valve. That oil did not make it to the creek, Larsen said.
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