Heating oil leak fouls Baileyville treatment plant Border Patrol site a suspected source

BAILEYVILLE – They detected the smell of what they thought was either home heating oil or kerosene at the wastewater treatment plant on Monday, and by Thursday they knew they had a major headache.

Household heating fuel had somehow gotten into the sewer system.

And not just a little, but a lot – as much as 2,000 gallons.

The impact on the town’s wastewater treatment system is still unknown. The state Department of Environmental Protection was notified and was en route Thursday afternoon.

The town crew as well as police and fire officials were on the corner of Route 1 and the Industrial Park Road Thursday morning looking into one of the town’s sewer collection tanks.

The Industrial Park is new. The U.S. Border Patrol recently opened a $6 million, 10,800-square-foot station there. In the past few days, station officials said they’d had a problem with their furnace tank.

“They lost some fuel oil over the weekend at the new U.S. Border Patrol Station, they’re saying under 10 gallons, but we’re dealing with a lot more than 10 gallons, the way it looks … we’re probably talking about 1,000 gallons in this and maybe more at the next [collection] station,” Fire Chief Darren Ireland said. “Both sites are contaminated, so right now we’ve shut down all the pumping stations that go up to there because we’re concerned about this backing into people’s basements and stuff.”

Sewer lines connect to the collection tank and waste is sent from area houses and businesses into the tank. The waste is then pumped about two miles up the road to another collection station and eventually to the town’s treatment plant.

Officials are worried that the hazardous material eventually could get into the nearby St. Croix River.

Ireland said officials checked the nearby Irving Big Stop and local motels, but it appears they were not the cause of the problem.

The smell was first detected at the plant on Monday. “We noticed the past couple of days we could smell some heating oil or kerosene in the sewer treatment plant itself,” Jim Moffitt, the town’s wastewater treatment operator, said. “We started looking around to find some kind of source and we found it this morning. This thing was half full of fuel oil.”

Moffitt said he was not concerned about fire. “It’s not going to explode, but it’s going to mess up the treatment at the wastewater treatment plant, and it’s going to get into the river,” he said.

The operator said that the treatment plant was an organic plant.

“There are no chemicals involved. It’s a micro-biological treatment system and that will probably screw up a lot of the organisms,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen … and we won’t probably know for a couple of days what the final results are going to be.”

Officials measured the amount of heating oil in the tank and found it was 4 to 5 feet deep. “It looks like it’s mostly fuel [oil]. There are only 2 or 3 inches of water on the bottom,” Ireland said.

Town Manager Scott Harriman arrived soon after police and fire officials. Asked if the town might be fined, Harriman said it was too early to tell.

“The thought of a fine hasn’t crossed my mind,” he said. “We just want to get it cleaned [up] and make sure we know where it’s coming from.”

Harriman said he also did not know who would have to pick up the tab for the cleanup.

“We don’t know whose expense it will be – ours, someone else’s – we don’t know anything yet,” he said.