Trucks haul 1,400 tons of contaminated soil from Fort Peck Reservation oil spill site
That's more than 50 large dump trucks full, and there's still more contaminated soil to be scraped up and hauled away.
The soil is being transported to a disposal facility near
The well had been shut down and was last inspected in December. It's believed that the wellhead froze and cracked in what was a brutally cold winter in the region. The crack leaked an estimated 90,000 barrels of brine with 600 barrels of crude oil from an
The leaked mixture flowed downhill for about a third of a mile and into a stock pond.
"On
Crews are removing oil from the shoreline of the stock pond using "high volume, low pressure flushing and raking activities,"
The
There are no known effects to downstream water users from the spill, according to
The well site was on top of a hill that's located south of the
"This isn't going to be a short-term project," said
A 2013 online pamphlet touts the
Oil exploration is nothing new to the reservation, which is home to the Sioux and Assiniboine tribes. The pamphlet noted: "Oil was first discovered on the
The western part of the reservation, where the spill occurred, was first developed in the 1980s. As of 2013 the pamphlet reported the Lustre Field had produced 7 million barrels of oil from approximately 50 wells.
Clean water is a precious commodity on the reservation. A 2014 study by the
Test wells showed the aquifer was being contaminated by brine, which is almost 10 times saltier than the ocean. A 1997
The brine plume had seeped southwest to
The groundwater contamination prompted the community of
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