Cleanup likely to take at least a year

Text By Ruth Melville
Photo Courtesy of Verdantas

Over 75 people gathered in Botelle School’s Hall of Flags on Nov. 15 to attend an informational meeting about the current state of cleanup after the gasoline tanker crash on Route 44.  

Seated behind the long table across the front of the room were representatives from the many state and local organizations that have been working on the emergency response to the accident, including Norfolk’s Town Hall, the Norfolk Volunteer Fire Department (NVFD), the Norfolk Lions Club Ambulance, Norfolk Emergency Management, the Public Works Department (DPW), Aquarion Water Company, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), and Verdantas and Environmental Services Inc. (ESI), two companies hired by the trucking company’s insurance company to supervise environmental assessment and remediation.

“Unprecedented,” “Herculean task,” “extremely rare” were words used by the speakers to describe the catastrophic event on the morning of Nov. 5 when the driver of a tanker truck heading west on Route 44 lost control of the truck and hit a utility pole. The truck flipped over, slid 100 yards and broke open, spilling its entire load of 8,200 gallons of gasoline onto the road.  

Within minutes of the crash, first responders were on the scene, removing the driver from the truck and evacuating nearby homes. Richard Swan, who runs DEEP’s emergency response unit, said, “Your fire department pulled together like I’ve never seen before.”

The immediate priority that morning, Swan said, was to kill the power and get people in the area to safety. Nearby residents were evacuated to Botelle School, but all but four families were able to go home by the end of the day. It was fortunate that the ground was damp and the truck was aluminum, so there were no sparks to set the gasoline on fire.

Once everyone was safe, efforts then shifted to stemming the flow of gasoline, which poured onto lawns and into storm drains along Route 44. Representatives from DEEP, Verdantas and ESI arrived quickly, and sand was dumped into the catch basins to slow the spread. 

Jeff King, a senior hydrologist with Verdantas, said that they have been able to do a lot of cleanup already. They excavated down to nine feet along the road and removed 53 roll off containers of soil, or about 7,800 tons, while ESI has pumped out 70,000 to 80,000 gallons of gasoline and water. 

In a gasoline spill like this, King said, once the gross contamination is removed, the next step is to evaluate what’s still there and then treat it. Verdantas is working with DEEP and ESI to set up a system for ongoing sampling of soil and water along the flow path, which went from Route 44 down along Pettibone Lane, under Maple Avenue, and down into the brook to the five-way intersection at John Curtiss and Shepard Roads. Repeated testing has shown that the gasoline did not reach Meadowbrook or the Blackberry River.

At the time of the meeting, 47 soil borings had been collected, and 31 monitoring wells dug along the flow path; the company will continue to regularly test the surface and ground water and the air. Only two properties in the area have their own wells, and both have been found to be clean. 

In response to a question from the audience, a representative from Aquarion reassured residents that the spill did not affect the town’s drinking water, which comes from a reservoir 200 feet up on the other side of town and moves through pipes that are under pressure, so contaminants cannot enter them. Aquarion will continue to monitor the water  but expects no problems. Similarly, the Sewer District regularly tests the sewer water coming into and out of the plant and has detected no gasoline. 

The mood in the room during the two-hour meeting was sometimes tense. Several people  in the audience, especially those who live close to the crash site, were concerned about the possible health effects of chemical contamination, and asked when they would receive concrete answers about potential risks. Others were worried about the future of their properties.

Lori Saliby, director of the Emergency Response and Spill Prevention unit at DEEP, replied that, at the time of the meeting, 11 days after the accident, the team working on the spill was just completing the emergency phase of the recovery—during which as much information was gathered and as many samples were taken as possible—and getting ready to transition to long-term recovery and remediation. She offered to provide a contact person from the state Department of Public Health to answer residents’ concerns as the cleanup continues.

Speaking from the floor, another member of the Emergency Response and Spill Prevention unit, Ken LeClerc, who had been at the accident scene from early Saturday morning, said that he understood peoples’ frustration but noted that “this is the biggest single release of gasoline we’ve had in this state.” He praised the NVFD and the DPW for their quick work in dumping sand to soak up the gasoline.

Smith explained, too, how the local geology makes it more difficult to determine exactly where the gasoline went, since fractures in the rock ledge make it hard to track spills underground. Verdantas will be installing some deeper wells near the crash site and along Pettibone Lane, but this must be done carefully so as not to provide new channels for any underground gasoline to flow into. 

First Selectman Matt Riiska cautioned that “this is far from over, there’s still a lot of work to do.” As the months-long process goes on, there will be several ways that residents can stay informed about progress on the remediation. Information collected by Verdantas will go to DEEP and the Department of Public Health and then be posted the town website. Town Hall will hold monthly public informational meetings and send out regular updates via email (you can sign up to the email list on the website norfolkct.org). Residents can also direct questions to spill@norfolkct.org.