Environmental Protection Agency orders navy to deal with oil spill at Travis Air Force Base

The Environmental Protection Agency ordered the Air Force Thursday to take stronger measures to deal with an oil spill at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California.

The discharged gas has leaked into close by Union Creek. 

The Air Force had recognized the oil spill into Union Creek as early as October 2021. However, the service didn’t notify the EPA or the federal authorities’s National Response Center of the leak till Feb. 4, 2022.

Since then, the Air Force has made quite a few experiences about additional spillage, together with an August 4, 2022, leak of jet gas from a pipeline on the bottom into the creek. 

In December, the San Francisco Bay Water Quality Control Board despatched the Air Force a discover of noncompliance over the persevering with leaks, and notifications to the National Resource Center about oil spillage have continued into 2023, the EPA mentioned.

The EPA contends that motion to determine and handle the last word supply of the gas discharge has not but been taken by the Air Force.

“This order is critical for ensuring that the Air Force addresses the oil discharge into Union Creek in a thorough and timely manner, and that no impacts to public health occur,” EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator Martha Guzman mentioned.

The order mandates that the Air Force use gear to restrict the oil’s unfold within the creek, examine and mitigate the supply of the spill, and enter a unified command construction to cease the gas discharge.

The unified command construction the Air Force has been ordered to enter consists of the EPA, native Solano County officers, the San Francisco Bay authorities and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Office of Spill Prevention and Response.

Travis Air Force Base officers indicated earlier in 2023 that the sheen from the oil spill had not been current in Union Creek since December 2022. In addition, the Air Force put oil spill assortment booms into Union Creek in order to gather contaminated materials.

The petroleum sheen, they contended, coincided primarily with rain occasions. The outfall drain utilized by a part of the bottom additionally carries runoff from a serious native roadway.

As of but, there haven’t been points with wildlife in and across the creek, and it has not impacted ingesting water — Union Creek shouldn’t be used for that function, Leslie Pena, the civilian environmental chief at Travis Air Force Base, defined to native Solano County information supply the Daily Republic.