Ashland Oil Spill: A state of environmental perspective

The Ashland Oil Spill, while certainly not the largest in history, may have been the most severe in terms of its potential impact on water supplies. This paper presents a case history of the spill from initial notification to the long-term environmental clean-up activities and underscores the need for additional regulation of above-ground storage tanks. On January 2, 1988, a tank containing 3.9 million gallons of diesel fuel collapsed and discharged three quarters of a million gallons into the Monongahela River in Floreffe, PA. The spill resulted in severe short-term environmental damage, the closing of a major inland port, and threatened the drinking water supplies of 500,000 people in Pennsylvania. The PA Dept. of Environmental Resources (DER) staff worked closely with local authorities to first contain the diesel fuel on site and then to provide additional warnings to downstream users as more information about the size of the spill became available. With the deployment of 20,000 feet of a river-wide containment boom, eleven vacuum trucks, three cranes, and over 150 people, about 30% of the product which entered the river through a 24-inch pipe was collected. One week after the spill, all PA water plants were back on line andmore » treating water, albeit with modified processes. The Ashland tank failure led to numerous reviews of the response to the incident, the causes and effects of the incident, and the regulatory requirements for above-ground tank storage.« less