ARLINGTON – The water’s clean, and only a bit more polluted soil will have to be taken from the site of an Arlington Airport fuel spill, city officials said Friday.
Test results show that some additional dirt will have to be removed where 2,000 gallons of aviation fuel spilled onto the ground June 16.
The good news, said Bill Blake, Arlington’s environmental coordinator, was that the groundwater was not contaminated.
The spill occurred when someone opened valves on two fuel trucks parked at the airport. Investigators are zeroing in on a suspect, but no arrests have been made, Arlington Police Chief John Gray said.
City officials also plan to develop a policy to alert residents and the media when an accident such as a fuel spill occurs in the city, said Lee Walton, the city’s interim administrator.
Although there was some risk that the spill could have contaminated the drinking water of nearby residents, the residents didn’t find out about the spill for a month.
“This slid through the cracks,” Walton said. “We’re going to try to set up a fail-proof system.”
Walton said he would take some draft proposals to the City Council on Monday.
Tests on the groundwater and soil surrounding the spill site were conducted last week, Blake said, adding that the city received those results on Friday.
Some of Arlington’s water comes from wells that tap into the same aquifer. A slight trace of fuel was detected in one of five monitoring wells, but not at levels that require additional cleanup, Blake said. Still, the city is trying to find out how much it would cost to clean the water around that well.
One of sixteen soil samples violated state standards and the area will have to be cleaned, Blake said.
“We could need to haul off one more load of soil,” he said.
The spill could have been much worse, but the city and the owners of the two fuel trucks quickly dug out the contaminated soil before the fuel could spread any farther.
The state Department of Ecology agrees that the fast cleanup was key, spokesman Larry Altose said.
“It looks like this episode is just about over,” he said. “We’re pleased with the city’s management of the site.”
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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