Crews work on containing oil spill

VILLAGE OF CYGNET - Environmental cleanup crews were continuing Friday to clean up a massive oil spill that has contaminated a large portion of the Portage River and Rocky Ford Creek in Wood County.

A press conference was called for 3 p.m Friday to provide additional information.

Large vacuum trucks are dotting the landscape along the two waterways, sucking out the brownish sheen of oil that spread more than a dozen miles toward the town of Pemberville. Contaminated soil along the creek and river banks also must be removed in the coming days.

The oil spill originated just outside the Village of Cygnet, a town of around 550 residents in southern Wood County just off Interstate 75.

Thousands of gallons of crude oil spilled into Rocky Ford Creek and migrated north to the river after an underground pipe ruptured at the Cygnet Pump Station and Terminal late Wednesday afternoon. The facility is part of the Maumee Pipeline System operated by Sunoco Logistics Partners L.P.

The underground pipeline moves about 142,000 barrels of crude oil each day (7.8 million gallons) from Lima north to feed refineries in Toledo and Detroit. Cygnet is a pumping and monitoring point along the way.

Sunoco spokesman B.J. Fischer on Friday morning said more than 100 people are working on the containment and cleanup effort. Sunoco has contracted with four separate environmental abatement firms and is working with state and federal EPA as well as county health officials.

Crews have been out since late Wednesday and battled high winds and fast moving river currents on Thursday to contain the spill, which migrated north up the Portage River almost to the village of Pemberville.

The process of removing the oil and contaminated soil could take a week.

"Overnight we continued to work on various elements of the spill," Fischer said Friday morning. "There's a winter storm coming so we ratcheted up the intensity level (on cleanup). Right now there’s more than 100 people working on this."

There still is no indication what caused the underground line between Grant Road and Rock Ridge Road, south of Cygnet, to rupture. A drop in pressure in the underground line was noticed around 5 p.m. that day and was the first indication something was amiss.

Fischer said metallurgy tests will be conducted to try to determine why the pipe broke "but we may never know the exact cause."

Environmental crews throughout the day Thursday battled strong winds and fast moving currents.

"That has kind of hampered the operation," Brad Gilbert, director of the Wood County Emergency Management Agency, said Thursday afternoon. "The creek and river are flowing fairly quickly, and the wind isn't helping either."

Wind gusts were over 30 miles per hour Thursday, according to the National Weather Service, and coming out of the west. Rocky Ford Creek feeds into the Portage River several miles north of Cygnet, and the river flows to the northeast to Lake Erie.

The wind essentially pushed the oil slick along, according to Gilbert.

On Thursday communities all along the Portage River, including in Sandusky and Ottawa counties, were being notified of potential contamination if the spill couldn’t be contained, according to Ohio EPA spokesperson Dina Pierce.

Pierce said the Coast Guard was asked to watch the mouth of the river, where it dumps into Lake Erie, for any signs of contamination.

By late Thursday it appeared crews had managed to stop the oil slick just south of the Village of Pemberville in eastern Wood County. That’s more than 12 miles from the source near Cygnet.

Fischer said aerial surveillance via helicopter indicated the oil contamination was stopped about two miles southwest of Pemberville in the river. Crews used large, tubular absorbent booms and portable dikes to contain the brownish, murky sheen of crude oil floating atop the water.

The oil leak was not immediately stopped after it was first detected. The pumping station was shut down, and crews had to excavate to get to the pipe near Rock Ridge and Grant roads. The leak was plugged shortly after 11 a.m. Thursday.

But oil continued flowing into Rocky Ford Creek, leaching from the soil.

Gilbert said drainage tiles lining water-logged farm fields near the leak site were essentially channeling spilled crude oil into the creek.

Just how much oil spilled is still unknown. But local and state officials used such words as "massive" and "substantial" to describe the spill.

Brad Espen, director of environmental services at the Wood County Health Department, on Thursday night said he was told that between 50 and 600 barrels of crude oil made its into the waterway.

At 55 gallons per barrel, that's between 2,750 gallons and 33,000 gallons of thick, heavy crude oil.

"I was surprised when I got out there at the amount of oil," Espen said Thursday.

He called the response "phenomenal" by the U.S. and Ohio EPA, and Coast Guard, which sent two helicopters to track the spill as it made its way down the river toward Pemberville.

Cleanup crews were sent to every road intersection with the river, where vacuums and booms were set up to recover the oil.

"I just hope the environmental damage isn't too severe," Espen said.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources is expected to survey the river Friday to assess the effect on wildlife. Most fish, turtles and frogs are in hibernation, which should limit the damage to wildlife, Espen said.

"I think we got lucky with the wildlife this time of year," he said.

Here in the Village of Cygnet, the sweet thick smell of oil filled the air Thursday.

Oil has always been a part of life in Cygnet, whether it was being pumped from the ground like it was in the late 1800s, or moving through high-volume pipelines as it does today.

Cygnet Mayor Nancy Myers has lived here all her life. For 60 years she's been able to look south from her home on Union Street toward the large oil storage tanks that comprise the pumping station and terminal along Rock Ridge Road.

The pumping facility has been a steady employer for village residents over the years. It's changed hands several times, under different ownership by companies like Standard Oil and BP and now Sunoco.

To locals, it's still simply known as "The Buckeye," a reference to its old moniker.

"A lot of kids when they graduate from high school, they automatically went to work for Buckeye," Myers said Friday.

She said the pumping station and terminal remain a mainstay of the community, and she trusts the current owners, Sunoco, will take care of the oil spill.

"They've always been very good to Cygnet, taxwise and as an employer," the mayor said.

When the leak occurred Wednesday, however, the village was one of the last to know. Some local residents had complained of a stronger than normal odor of oil in the air, and someone called the sheriff's office to report it.

Myers and the village superintendent, Steve Vanscoder, drove to the terminal facility on Rock Ridge Road late Wednesday afternoon to find out what was going on. It was then they learned of the spill.

Sunoco in a press release Thursday said it followed its normal emergency response procedure, contacting the state EPA after the leak was first detected.

On Thursday, testing was conducted on the deep underground water wells that provide Cygnet residents with their drinking water. Gilbert said there were no signs of contamination.

The water wells are between 160 and 185 feet deep, according to officials.

Fischer Friday morning said there will be another round of tests to ensure the drinking water has not been contaminated.

"They've always protected us in the past and I'm sure they'll protect us now," Myers said.

Sentinel Tribune County Editor Jan Larson contributed to this story The BG Sentinel-Tribune is a FOXToledo.com media affiliate.