PORT ANGELES – Construction crews will begin digging out soil contaminated with hazardous oil from a Port Angeles beach tonight.
The crews, working under the supervision of the state Department of Ecology, will take out at least 15 truck loads of sand and soil that have been contaminated with some sort of petroleum product, said Doug Stoltz, lead spill responder with Ecology.
We’re trying to plan on anything,” Stoltz said Wednesday.
“Hopefully it’s just a 55-gallon drum.”
The oil was discovered a week ago by crew members with Glacier Construction of Mukilteo who were anchoring a new sea wall with riprap as part of a bluff stabilization project at the closed Port Angeles landfill at 3501 W. 18th St.
The crew was working at 2:30 a.m. to take advantage of a low tide in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The oil was found on the ocean side of a sea wall, but it is not thought to have seeped into the water.
After the crews found the oil nine feet deep underground, work was halted for 48 hours, then allowed to continue 54 feet to the west.
Exploratory digs on Monday and Tuesday found no other oil.
Because the tides were not favorable on Wednesday, Ecology, the city and the contractor planned this evening’s excavation.
The oil found and tested so far has been a mixture of some lubricating oil, heating fuel and diesel.
The oil is likely very old, Stoltz said, because the of the particularly toxic parts of the product – benzene, toluene and xylene.
These chemicals have either already broken down or evaporated.
The oil is still toxic and hazardous, Stoltz said, and keeping it out of the water during cleanup will be a priority.
“That’s a big part of our job, picking up people’s oil,” Stoltz said.
Stoltz said it is likely that the oil is from an old storage tank or an abandoned drum that was either part of the landfill and fell from the bluff to the beach, or that possibly washed ashore years ago.
“There’s gotta be a source, a tank, maybe it just deteriorated and left a pool of oil,” Stoltz said.
