Diesel fuel leaking from a storage tank along a road in Wales has been contained, according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
On June 4th, an employee with the Wales Native Corporation came upon the spillage beside the Kingkinkgin Road, 150 feet from the Bering Sea. The leaking, out-of-service tank could hold 22-thousand gallons of fuel – when it was found, only about 300 gallons remained. But Ashley Adamczak with ADEC says it’s unknown how much fuel was in the tank when the leak began.
The spill was caused by corrosion on the single-wall tank, which ADEC patched the following day. Adamczak says responders removed the remaining 300 gallons of fuel, and oily water from an adjacent tank. The next step will be discarding the containers and conducting a site assessment to gauge how far contamination spread through the soil. So far, there have been no reports of impacts to wildlife or the shoreline.
ADEC is developing a cleanup plan. For questions, or to provide information, you can call 907-451-2126.
