Talk Bronx New York

An explosion at a Consolidated Edison substation has set off a massive oil-spill cleanup along the Bronx River.

Scores of workers are cleaning up an unknown quantity of a light, clear oil similar to mineral oil that flowed into the city’s storm sewer system on Nov. 4 when a 345-kilovolt transformer containing 30,000 gallons of the fluid caught fire. A machine malfunction created an electrical arc that ignited the oil at 152 Kingston Ave. in the Dunwoodie neighborhood.

The resulting smoky fire was controlled in 20 minutes, and no one lost power from the event. Much of the oil, which was used as a dielectric fluid to cool the transformers, burned or remained on-site, but some of it mixed with the water used to quell the flames and escaped into the city’s sewer system, where it flowed into the Bronx River near the Cross County Parkway.

A Con Edison spokesman said that cleanup of the escaped oil began the day of the fire. According to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the fluid initially eluded capture by booms, a type of sponge that absorbs oil, because of fast-moving water along the river.

Crews hired by Con Edison are now working in areas where the river’s flow is slower, mainly near the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Garden.

On Sunday, dozens of workers could be seen at the zoo and garden, placing booms and doing other remediation work. The sewer pipe that delivered the oil to the river is also being cleaned.

Much of the oil has mixed with fallen leaves, and crews are using large vacuum trucks to extract the oil and leaves from the riverbanks.

“Right now what’s been found are trace amounts of oil in the form of rainbow sheens,” Con Edison spokesman Bob McGee said Monday.

The DEC has not discovered any wildlife injured by the oil spill, but the agency’s biologists are checking the contaminated area.

Lori Severino, a spokeswoman for the DEC, declined to say on how long the clean-up might last. McGee said the utility will continue its clean-up until the DEC decides that the problem has been addressed.

McGee said that the utility did not yet have a cost estimate for the work. According to the DEC, there are 73 people involved in the cleanup, including 10 Con Edison employees and 63 workers from an outside contractor.

SOURCE

Related posts

• The Bronx Zoo turns 110 (0)
• Wild green Bronx (0)
• Where All New Yorkers Can See the City Anew (0)
• WCS forges Bronx-Argentina penguin connection (0)
• Tiki Barber and 3,800 Others Run Wild at the Bronx Zoo (0)

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post