June 13, 2010 06:51 PM UTC

SLC Oil Spill Pollutes Liberty Park

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• by: ClubTwitty

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

It’s been a bad few PR weeks for Big Oil of late–and now the tarring can continue, with Chevron stepping on the stage as villian, manifest of our own addictions.  

As the home town Deseret News is reporting:

SALT LAKE CITY – Containment of a crude oil spill estimated at around 20,000 gallons into Red Butte Creek is expected to last well into the night and continue through Sunday as multiple agencies work to mitigate impacts to the stream and wildlife.

The fracture of the Chevron pipeline sent oil gushing into the riparian corridor, leaving the thick, tacky substance clinging to rocks, soil and any fish and birds in its path.

A biology teacher from Rowland Hall watched with dismay the stream “running black” on Saturday.

The creek that runs through his backyard and normally gives him such delight instead swamped the morning air with a horrible smell.

“It stinks and it is toxic,” Peter Hayes said. “Whatever is in that creek will die. I have so little faith in oil companies to take care of this.”

Obviously the wages of our addicition have been the focus of the news lately, in tragic detail.  At first it was 1,000 barrels, then 5,000, then 12-14,000, 19,000, until now, again, revised upwards to 40,000 barrels a day gushing from the site of the destroyed Deep Horizon. A Valdez a week, into what were some of our nation’s richest waters-still spewing.

And our addictions are having impacts here at home, nearby. Local mishaps, explosions around the country, blown out gas wells spewing fracking fluids–this is a dangerous activity that can carry severe consequences when things get overlooked, ignored, or otherwise go wrong.

The failure of the Chevron oil pipeline, running from western Colorado and eastern Utah, went unnoticed for hours, and was reported (no thanks to the company) Saturday morning, the Deseret News article continues:

The pipeline fracture most likely happened at about 10 p.m. Friday on the south side of Red Butte Creek. The 10-inch-diameter line runs down Emigration Canyon to the company’s refinery near Beck Street, carrying medium crude oil from western Colorado and eastern Utah to the Salt Lake Valley.

Chevron reported receiving high and low pressure alarms Friday evening, but the nature of the alarm did not give a location that would pinpoint the trouble.

…Just before 7 a.m. Saturday, however, Salt Lake police and fire received reports of petroleum odors near the Veterans Administration facility on 500 S. Foothill Drive. It was then that the crude oil was discovered in Red Butte Creek, with 50 to 60 gallons gushing into the stream every minute.

The Great Salt Lake, the Jordan River, Liberty Park, Red Butte Creek.  These are places of value, places that matter–places that deserve to have their merit weighed against the what ifs as development proceeds.  

Even as the BP Gulf Coast oil tragedy and its stumbling cleanup efforts continue to dominate the news, Salt Lake City awakened Saturday morning to its own ecological disaster winding its way through Salt Lake neighborhoods and turning Liberty Park into a command center.

Where children would normally play and chase ducks, those same waterfowl were coated with the gooey substance, helplessly trying to groom the oil off themselves.

The scale of the watersheds and landscape is much smaller at the eastern edge of the Great Basin than the Gulf, and the scale of the ‘disaster’ is proportionate.  The story is too much the same.

…The pond at Liberty Park – Liberty Lake – was soon covered with thick black oil slicks, and residents along the streams reported seeing dead fish.

…A construction crew in the neighborhood began using its heavy equipment to help dam the stream in early efforts to stanch the flow, Freitag said.

“Our real concern is keeping people safe and keeping the oil from reaching the Great Salt Lake,” he added.

Crews are using absorbent booms and creating dams in an effort to contain the spill, but some oil has already leaked to the Jordan River.