Gas spill cleanup continues

Cleanup of gasoline spilled after a tanker truck overturned last week on Montana 35 near Finley Point continued Friday as the Montana Department of Transportation began looking into whether the state can limit truck traffic on the lake-side highway.

Crews on Thursday completed a monitoring well at the spill site itself and on Friday began work on two more - one to the west and downhill of the spill site and one to the northwest of the spill site between the highway and the water supply for nearby homes. That water supply has consistently tested negative for any contamination.

Gasoline and gasoline vapors have so far been kept out of Flathead Lake, according to Carey Cooley of the Lake County Office of Emergency Services.

Vapors, however, have been found in two springs about 500 feet northwest of the spill site, forcing crews to collect the spring water in cisterns equipped with charcoal filters before allowing it to flow into the lake. The levels of gasoline vapors collecting in the springs - which discharge 100,000 gallons of water a day into the lake - have stopped increasing, but aren't decreasing either, said Cooley.

One home was evacuated Wednesday after gasoline vapors were found in the residence's crawl space. Crews installed a venting system in an attempt to neutralize fumes before they enter the home's crawl space

According to the Montana Highway Patrol, the tractor-trailer was pulling tandem tankers northbound on Montana 35 near mile marker 5 when its rear-most trailer drifted off the right side of the road and overturned.

More than 6,300 gallons of gasoline gushed into the ground, stretching out over 200 feet of ditch and seeping under the roadbed. The gasoline quickly soaked into the ground, forcing crews to remove more than 1,400 tons of contaminated soil. Contamination in some places reached 21 feet deep.

About 1,000 gallons of gasoline have been removed, leaving more than 5,000 gallons of fuel still in the ground. An interceptor trench has been dug between the spill site and the lake.

The spill site is still about 2,000 feet short of the lake's high-water mark, which is normally reached in early summer.

Authorities began repaving the dug-up portions of Montana 35 on Friday afternoon and planned to have both lanes of the highway open by Saturday evening.

Only one lane of the highway has been open since the April 2 crash, and a temporary traffic light is managing traffic flow.

In the wake of the crash, Montana Department of Transportation director Jim Lynch has ordered staff to begin considering options to limit truck traffic on Montana 35, department spokeswoman Charity Watt Levis said.

But the trucking industry would resist any state effort to limit access to the highway, said Spook Stang, executive vice president of the Montana Motor Carriers Association.

"We're pretty much opposed to limiting or eliminating truck traffic on any federally funded highway in Montana," he said.

Even though Montana 35 has a slower speed limit than U.S. 93, truckers sometimes prefer that route between the Flathead Valley and Missoula because Montana 35 is flatter, quicker,and burns less fuel.

And while shifting all truck traffic onto U.S. 93 would reduce complaints from residents on the east side of Flathead Lake, it would only increase them on the west side.

"We already get complaints from people in Polson, Somers, and Lakeside for the amount of traffic coming through their towns," said Stang.

Forcing truckers to use longer routes, especially with gas prices where they are, would have a noticeable economic impact on the Flathead, Stang said.

"It's going to, obviously, increase the price of transportation to the point where people who are buying goods are going to say, 'We don't want them anymore,'" he said, observing that the trucking industry is intimately connected to almost all aspects of the economy. "It'll have a ripple effect throughout the economy."

Truckers pay 54 percent of road taxes in Montana and account for only 10 percent of lane miles traveled, said Stang. If the government begins putting off limits the roads those taxes go to maintain, truckers would expect a reduction in gas taxes or some other system of rebates.

Tractor-trailers with tandem trailers are actually some of the safest trucks on the road, despite this most recent accident. They have more brakes, greater stopping power, and their drivers are federally mandated to have more training, Stang said.

"The problem with fuel spills is that they're unpredictable and where the fuel goes is unpredictable," Stang said. "As long as we're using diesel and gasoline to operate our vehicles, that's going to be there."

Only about 40 such fuel spills occur every year nationwide, Cooley said. The last significant fuel spill in Lake County was in 1992 near Yellow Bay.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com