FORT COLLINS, Colo.—Workers with axes and meat hooks are cleaning up 5,000 gallons of asphalt that spilled into the Poudre River Wednesday after a commercial tanker crashed through a barrier and overturned on a riverbank.
Contractors plan to spend the weekend hacking off basketball-sized chunks of the taffy-like asphalt and pulling them ashore with meat hooks on ropes.
“The more you pull it, the stringier it gets,” said Robert Lamorie, a supervisor with Belfor Environmental, a contractor hired for the cleanup. “The more you chop, the more you get your ax stuck in there.”
But officials said the cleanup work is moving faster than they originally expected. An official with the Environmental Protection Agency, which is directing the cleanup, said the temperature of the river rocks is helping speed cleanup.
“If the rocks were wet and cool when (the asphalt) hit them, it just peels right off,” coordinator Craig Myers told The (Fort Collins) Coloradoan. “I think we maybe lucked out a little bit.”
Recreation in the river has been suspected along a four-mile stretch of the Poudre until further notice. Myers said the majority of the cleanup may be finished within a week.
The asphalt was bound for a paving project near Cameron Pass. The Wyoming-based trucking company, Malpaso, will be ordered to pay cleanup costs.
The trucker in the accident, 52-year-old Kenneth Gale, has been cited for careless driving. He was treated and released with minor injuries.
Myers said that water tests are pending, but that significant contamination isn’t expected.
“It is really more of an aesthetic blight to the river than anything else,” Myers said. “Is it any worse than what’s coming off the road? Probably not.”
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Information from: Fort Collins Coloradoan,
