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SALT LAKE CITY — More than four years after close to 34,000 gallons of Chevron oil spilled into Red Butte Creek, there are new questions about a lingering environmental impact following a discovery made by a construction crew.
The crew was working close to the creek Thursday on the property of a meetinghouse for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints near 1150 East Harvard Ave. when they observed an oil sheen, smelled oil and halted their project, a neighbor and a Salt Lake City spokesman told KSL Monday.
“The foreman of the job, rightly so, immediately was concerned for the safety of his crew and stopped them from working,” said resident Marina Riedel, who was on the church property when work came to a standstill Thursday.
Riedel returned Friday and captured close-up video of the creek, which appeared to still have an oil sheen on it.
“I could see the rainbows moving — of the floating oil on the water — and I could smell it really strongly,” Riedel said. “And if you pick gravel up out of the river bed just below that, it smells really strongly of oil.”
Riedel said she believed the oil may have originated from a bypassed culvert, but neither the city nor the construction company could confirm Monday the nature of the project or what exactly crews were working on when they detected the oil.
Salt Lake City spokesman Art Raymond said the construction crew contacted the city and inspectors responded with oil booms.
The inspectors also took samples from the area, Raymond said, but when they arrived they could neither smell oil nor see it.
Even though that oil spill was four years ago, here's our neighborhood still suffering the consequences and having an environmental impact from it.
–Marina Riedel
A statement issued to KSL by the LDS Church Monday only said, “The Church is looking into the matter.”
Regardless of the outcome of the pending tests, Riedel saw the ordeal as an unsettling reminder of what took place in June of 2010, when the pond in her back yard had a thick coat of oil and her fish and ducks suffered.
“Even though that oil spill was four years ago, here’s our neighborhood still suffering the consequences and having an environmental impact from it,” Riedel said. “It’s still too bad that here are these guys just trying to do a nice thing and take good care of their property and they have to stop their project because they find oil.”
The June 2010 spill resulted in lawsuits and a number of residents citing health problems from the residual oil.
Attempts to reach Chevron Monday evening were unsuccessful, though it remained unclear if the company had been made aware of the situation.
Raymond said results from the test samples taken by the city were expected back as early as Tuesday.
