(The following story by Louis Cooper appeared on the Pensacola News Journal website on January 6.)
PENSACOLA, Fla. — Efforts continued Monday to mop up 23,000 gallons of petroleum that leaked from a damaged tanker car in a CSX train derailment near Milton on Saturday.
About 8,000 gallons of petroleum have been recovered, said Gary Sease, a CSX spokesman.
“We’ve taken several soil and groundwater samples to determine the extent of the oil on the ground and under the ground,” he said.
CSX, along with federal and state environmental agencies, will use the results of those tests to determine how much soil needs to be removed, he said.
The derailment occurred about 6:20 a.m. Saturday near Avalon Boulevard near a “passing siding” — an area where a train can move onto a second set of tracks so another can pass.
All six of the train’s engines and 13 of its 46 cars left the rails, spilling the petroleum and the contents of a car carrying wine.
Primary rail traffic was restored Sunday.
The “siding” track should be repaired later this week, Sease said.
While the damaged cars have been removed from the track, some of them remain on site. Those cars will either be securely moved or scrapped in place, depending on the damage, Sease said.
Heavy equipment has been on site since the crash, with much of the cleanup coordinated from a staging area in the nearby Bon View subdivision.
Dan Helms’ home on Jade Moon Drive backs up to the staging area.
“You can definitely tell they’re moving heavy equipment. When that goes by, it shakes the world,” said Helms, 55. “It’s been noisy around here, but they’ve been respectful about the hours. They shut everything off when it gets dark. ”
While CSX and its contractors have done most of the cleanup, county public works employees helped in the first hours after the crash, Santa Rosa County Administrator Hunter Walker said. The county also opened its landfill Sunday to dispose of the wine.
CSX will reimburse the county for those costs, but Walker isn’t yet sure how much that might be.