The Haines section of the Haines-Fairbanks military fuel pipeline suffered bullet holes, collisions with vehicles and corrosion during its 16 years of use that ended in 1971.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is closing in on completing cleanup of places where fuel spilled out of the pressurized, eight-inch line during those incidents.
“I’d like to have it done in five years, but my goal is to have it done as soon as possible. We want to have it all closed out and all the hazards eliminated but there’s a process we have to follow,” including waiting on funding, Corps project manager Beth Astley said in an interview this week. Astley was in town for last week’s meeting of the Army tank farm Restoration Advisory Board.
During investigations in the past eight years, the agency has investigated 11 sites of reported pipeline leaks between Lutak and the Canada border, ranging from significant line ruptures to places were residents reported their drinking water tasting like oil. At seven sites, no contamination was found above State of Alaska clean-up levels, Astley said.
The four remaining sites include Young Road, where 4,200 gallons of jet fuel spilled in 1968 and was cleaned up by removal of 600 yards of contaminated soil about five years ago, and a site near Horse Farm Creek at 18 Mile Haines Highway, where 75,000 gallons of jet fuel spilled from a corrosion-caused leak in an underground pipe in 1970. The fuel drained into the creek and killed at least 100 fish, according to reports by observers who showed up four days after the event.
Four separate sets of samples taken at the 18 Mile site in recent years have failed to turn up any contamination. “We kept thinking, with 75,000 gallons, there must be something left there,” said Anne Marie Palmieri of Haines, who works on contaminated sites for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
Palmieri said one theory is that the jet fuel traveled atop rain-saturated land there, moving downhill into the creek. “A lot of it went into the river and killed fish,” she said.
Work in the next few years will concentrate on the two remaining sites: at a Wells Bridge “gate valve,” once used to turn off sections of the 626-mile line, and at 15.5 Mile Haines Highway, where 33,600 gallons of “fuel product” leaked during a rupture discovered in December 1968.
Work as early as next summer could address contamination at Wells, an apparent slow leak of undetermined duration and volume centered near an old barn on the Haines Highway’s north side there. DEC’s Palmieri said contamination there goes at least 30 feet deep and extends in a plume about 60-feet wide and contains toxins more diverse than those found at 15.5 Mile. “It leaked enough to hit groundwater 24 feet down,” Palmieri said.
Astley of the Corps said the Wells site was still being investigated, but a site work plan is expected by next spring. Excavation at the site will likely be limited to soils directly under the valve, as removal of the entire contaminated area would likely turn the area into a giant gravel pit, she said. “That’s not a viable solution,” she said.
Like the leak at 18 Mile, the 15.5 Mile leak was blamed on corrosion of the pipe that was one-quarter inch in thickness above ground and about a one-third inch thick at underground sections. According to a 2003 history of the pipeline penned by the Colorado-based Center for the Environmental Management of Military Land, only about 140 miles of the pipeline was buried, including about 40 miles buried near Haines to protect pipe from rockslides and avalanches.
Corrosion, particularly at the southern end of the pipeline, led to closure of the pipeline when the federal government decided the increasing cost of repairs had exceeded the line’s usefulness, according to the Colorado report.
DEC’s Palmieri said surface water samples taken at 15.5 Mile have proved clean, but groundwater and soil contamination have been found on both sides of the highway there. Soft soils at the site may make addressing contamination at the site expensive and difficult, Palmieri said. Results of a July investigation of the site are pending.