Cleanup of Ridley Creek oil spill near Media is almost complete

Crews are in the final stages of cleaning up the site where oil leaked into Ridley Creek after a tanker truck crashed near Media in September, according to municipal and county officials.

Ridley Creek Road will continue to have road closures from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. until the work is finished.

Work should be completed next week, said Larry Bak, the county’s hazmat crew chief. Crews from Lewis Environmental have removed the contaminated soil and are refilling the site. Environmental consulting firm Aquaterra is overseeing the remediation work and testing.

A Cardinal USA truck carrying home heating oil crashed on Sept. 22 while traveling north on the Route 1 Bypass at the border of Upper Providence and Middletown Townships. The truck swerved across the highway and rolled an undetermined number of times, according to Upper Providence Fire Marshal Alan Mancill.

The truck came to rest with the cab hanging off the east side of an overpass and a gash in its side that spilled 1,000 to 2,000 gallons of oil onto the roadway and into Ridley Creek below, Mancill said.

The cause of the crash is unclear and Upper Providence police could not be reached for comment.

Blocking the oil’s flow downstream was a priority for the Delaware County Emergency Services Department’s hazmat team, Bak said.

“I sent half of my team up onto the bridge to work with the tank truck, and I sent the other half of my initial response down to the creek to get in front of it as it was going downstream,” Bak said. The crew put containment booms across the creek to halt the spread of oil.

Aqua’s Ridley Creek water treatment facility is about a mile and a half downstream from the site. Bak said the facility was quickly alerted to shut off its intake after the spill. It was reopened after the water was deemed safe, but the booms remain in place just in case.

“I believe the expression is ‘an overabundance of caution,’” Bak said.

The site of the crash posed a challenge to the cleanup crew, with oil contaminating a hillside as well as the creek and marshy area below the bridge. Crews used a special excavator with 35-foot arms.

“It had to reach out and down because it’s a fairly steep hill,” Bak said. “It’s not an insignificant height.”

To reach the contaminated areas, the crew also built a dam from the Ridley Creek Road side with pipes underneath to let the creek flow underneath. The dam will be removed after work is complete, Bak said.

Once the work is done, soil will continue to be monitored for two years.

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