South Sound News

Ecology officials invite public to learn about Olympia brewery oil spill

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The Washington State Department of Ecology is inviting the public to find out how the efforts to remove oil from the Deschutes River and Capitol Lake are going.

Officials with the Department of Ecology said it will hold a meeting starting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Olympia Center.

Crews are still working to remove oil that coated vegetation along the waterways, officials said Monday.

Oil leaked into the waterways after an electrical transformer was damaged by someone stealing copper wire at the former Olympia Brewery, officials said. Tumwater Developers LLC, the property owners, is responsible for the cleanup.

The Department of Ecology found out about the spill on Feb. 25.

Officials said oil ran into stormwater drains and then discharged into Tumwater Falls Park and the Deschutes River. Oil also reached Capitol Lake and became enmeshed in shoreline vegetation.

The transformer that leaked the oil had the capacity to hold 677 gallons; however, just how much oil spilled is still unknown, officials said. That oil contained a low concentration of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), which poses no immediate risk to the health and safety of people but can accumulate in the aquatic food web and reach harmful levels in fish.

“It just flowed over onto the sidewalks, down a couple of hundred feet into a storm drain, and down the bank into the park,” said Ron Holcomb, with the Department of Ecology, which is overseeing the cleanup.

“Any amount of oil that gets into the environment is not good,” Holcomb said.

People who live in the area know the old Olympia Brewery building's history. It's been vacant since 2003, broken into multiple times and went up in flames in October.

Tumwater City Administrator John Doan said this about the property owners, “They have problems with graffiti and broken windows and things like that, which actually sort of compound. One broken window leads to more broken windows.”

Doan said fines have racked up with the property owners because they did not secure and keep the property safe, causing them to violate city codes.

“They owe about $78,000,” Doan said. “Some related to the building code, some are about securing the property so people couldn’t get in, some of them related to fire sprinkler and fire suppression system,” he said.

On Feb. 20, Tumwater Developers signed an agreement to make big changes in securing the area, Doan said.

As to when the cleanup will be completed, the Department of Ecology said it plans to continue the cleanup until tests come back clean.

For information on the spill response, visit the Department of Ecology's website.