COMMERCE CITY, Colo.—Suncor Energy officials say remedies for toxic pollution from a refinery north of Denver are sufficient even though inspections show benzene levels in Sand Creek and the South Platte River more than doubled last month.
Vice president John Gallagher said cleanup systems on Suncor and nearby property will eventually lower dissolved benzene levels in the water, The Denver Post reported Wednesday ( ).
Benzene is a cancer-causing liquid that occurs naturally in crude oil.
Trenches, vapor-extraction systems and recovery wells have removed about 697,200 gallons of material from the ground over the past five months, company officials said.
Warren Smith of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said benzene levels are fluctuating but said there is no overall upward trend.
“We expect that, as the system is fine-tuned, there may be temporary increases in some monitoring locations due to the volume of air injected into the subsurface,” Smith said in a prepared response to queries. “We don’t expect an instantaneous improvement.”
The refinery site, which dates to the 1930s, is one of the region’s most prolonged cases of industrial pollution.
An angler spotted black goo oozing into the creek and river in November and called state authorities. They dispatched a county inspector who found no problem. Federal Environmental Protection Agency officials went to the scene and launched an emergency cleanup.
The refinery produces jet fuel, gasoline, diesel fuel and asphalt mostly from oil from Colorado and Wyoming.
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Information from: The Denver Post,
