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Shenango River spill nearly cleaned up
By jeanne starmack
FARRELL, PA.
Mercer County’s public- safety director says the spill that fouled the Shenango River after a mistake at Duferco Farrell Corp. is nearly cleaned up.
Frank Jannetti said Thursday that crews were still working at the river with vacuum trucks trying to collect what remained of 13,000 gallons of an oily mixture that inadvertently was discharged into the river from Duferco’s plant on Roemer Boulevard. He said they hoped to be finished by Thursday night.
Jannetti said that as far as he could tell, there were no environmental effects from the spill, a mixture that was 95 percent water and 5 percent oil.
He said there haven’t been any dead fish spotted, and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is still monitoring the river.
The state Department of Environmental Protection is also there.
Duferco said Wednesday that workers who replaced a pump that circulated the mixture, a lubricant used in processing steel coils, directed the mixture to the plant’s general drainage system instead of into a holding bin. The system drained it into the river for about seven hours. The mistake was discovered at 7 a.m. Wednesday.
The substance made it as far as West Middlesex, Pa., but not to Pulaski, said Janetti.
Crews tried to contain it with a series of booms.