The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Fremont County Sheriff’s Department, and Fremont County Emergency Management Director Ray Southard are investigating a major oil spill that occurred Wednesday morning southwest of Canon City. The heavy, black oil eventually reached the Arkansas River prompting Fremont County officials to notify water and irrigation users downstream in Pueblo County of the contamination. Southard said the spill originated from the yard of Fremont Paving and Ary Brothers Trucking just west of MacKenzie Avenue. While company officials have estimated that only a couple hundred gallons of oil migrated from their site, Southard says he believes several thousand gallons spilled off site.
Southard said the spill involved heavy waste oil intended for use by Fremont Paving in mixing asphalt. Company officials said the spill originated from a 10,000 gallon storage tank. They said the tank was not full but could not estimate how much actually spilled. A company spokesman said a large amount of the oil was captured in a pair of catch basins on site. The spilled oil traveled down a steep embankment into irrigation water running in the Fremont Irrigation Ditch. The oil then traveled in the ditch before spilling into the Chandler Creek drainage west of Florence through the new Pathfinder Park and the Oak Creek drainage in Florence. It’s not known how much oil might have reached the Arkansas River. Fremont County officials received several complaints of the heavy oil having coated beaver dams in the Oak Creek drainage.
Florence Volunteer Firemen placed booms in the river to soak up the oil and prevent it from traveling downstream. Irrigators in the Brewster area west of Florence were among those initially reporting the oil slick in the irrigation ditch. Irrigation flow in the Minnequa Canal through Florence to Pueblo was also shut down. Witnesses reported to the county commissioners that the heavy oil looked like tar on the water surface in the Minnequa Canal and managers at the Sumo Golf Course shut down their pumps before any of the oily water reached their irrigation holding ponds. Southard said he escorted EPA Official Pete Stevenson of Denver and State Health Official Tim Vrudny of Pueblo to various sites in the irrigation drainages where environmental damage appears to be the worst. Southard said an EPA task force is being mobilized to assess and coordinate the cleanup. Fremont Paving officials say they have hired an environmental firm from Colorado Springs to initiate clean up of contaminated areas. Southard said he expects to spend most of the day Friday to further assess the extent of the damage from the oil spill including downstream towards Pueblo.
