The state Department of Environmental Conservation has been able to get back to a remote spot along the Dalton Highway where a fuel tanker wrecked and overturned Sunday night, spilling 1,200 gallons of diesel. The spill and a fire that burned the wrecked rig occurred near the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
DEC now estimates that the diesel spilled over a 30- by-120-foot area about 200 feet from an above-ground section of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, near the community of Wiseman.
The truck was owned by Fairbanks-based Big State Logistics, which dispatched personnel Sunday night to recover about 9,000 gallons that was still in the wrecked tanker. And conduct some initial cleanup of the area.
Sometimes later that night, the wrecked tractor-trailer caught fire and burned up.
A DEC report issued Wednesday afternoon says the fire burned vegetation within a 30-foot radius. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Ashley Adamczak is an environmental specialist with the Fairbanks DEC office. She says the agency will be overseeing what will likely be a complex cleanup operation of the spill site in the spring, around breakup.
“Due to the sensitive area in northern and Interior Alaska, we have to be careful with our cleanup actions to ensure our cleanup tactics don’t do more harm to the environment than if we didn’t do anything,” she said.
DEC says a Fairbanks-based environmental services contractor hired by Big State conducted a limited site assessment Tuesday, and decided to delay further cleanup in order to bring in more equipment. And due to safety concerns over flammable diesel that had soaked into the ground.
Adamczak says DEC will work with the the contractor, Fairbanks-based Alaska Resource and Environmental Services, to ensure the cleanup operation restores the area, and doesn’t cause additional harm.
“So we’ll have to ensure that the soil that is backfilled doesn’t contain any invasive species and is similar to the surroundings,” she said. “So we’ll have to source that material and make it’s appropriate for that site.”
Adamczak says the diesel-soaked soil will then have to be taken to a certified site, probably in Fairbanks, for remedation.
Until the cleanup begins, Adamczak says preliminary work including moving utility lines such as fiber-optic and electrical lines located away from the excavation area. She says those lines run along the Dalton to provide power and communications for pipeline operations.
“There are electrically charged lines that are buried in the ground along the Dalton Highway,” she said.
Adamczak says DEC will ensure Big State pays for the cleanup and the state’s cost of the overseeing the operation.
According to the DEC, there have been six tanker-trucks wrecks resulting in spills so far in 2014, which have spilled a total 10,385 gallons of fuel.
DEC says there were 15 spills from tanker-truck wrecks in 2013, resulting in 19,469 gallons of fuel spilled.
Editor’s Note: This story has been revised to report the number of tanker-truck wrecks and amount of fuel spilled in those wrecks statewide in 2013 and year-to-date 2014.
