Barges, boats, cranes and divers to clean up Pepacton oil spill

Photo of a small tugboat and an oil spill surrounded by yellow booms on the Pepacton Reservoir. Taken on Tuesday, May 15 from Route 30, near the pump station for the East Delaware Tunnel, by Lissa Harris.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection announced yesterday that a professional environmental recovery crew is cleaning up suspected fuel oil from a spill caused by a mysterious object buried beneath the Pepacton Reservoir.

Preparations for the cleanup, which will involve four barges, three boats, two cranes, a diving team, and a containment boom, began yesterday, according to a press release from the DEP. The plan is for a team of six divers to spend next week removing all traces of oil from the buried object. (A happy Fourth of July to them.)

The spill was discovered in April, and earlier this month a special containment cap was fitted over the leak. The DEP reports that no oil has been found outside a containment boom. The leak's presence hasn't dampened enthusiasm for the Pepacton's brand-new boating program, which has been going gangbusters this month.

No one is exactly sure what the object under the reservoir is. In an article published today, Mid-Hudson News asks Assistant DEP Commissioner David Warne to speculate whether the "vessel," as the DEP refers to it, has been there since the reservoir was built in the 1950s: 

“When the reservoir was built there was work done to remove known and identified water quality hazards,” Warne said on Wednesday. “We’ve gone back through our records relating to the construction of Pepacton and can’t find any mention of any particular hazard found in this area. So, it’s hard to say for certain what may have happened.”