Cut Bank oil spill cleanup finished after 6 weeks

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) – The cleanup of an estimated 840-gallon oil spill in northwestern Montana is finished after six weeks, with federal regulators planning to inspect the site this week.

Cleanup contractor Indian Country Environmental Associates completed the work on Sunday, owner Gabe Renville told the Great Falls Tribune (http://bit.ly/oUcpVk ).

The crew collected 20 55-gallon barrels of oil and water by cleaning oil from soil, pools of water and rocks down a steep ravine where the oil spread from a broken line on an oil field on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation to the Cut Bank Creek nearly a mile away.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which is overseeing the cleanup, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which regulates oil and gas development on the reservation, will inspect the cleanup Tuesday or Wednesday, said Don Judice of the BLM's Great Falls office.

“I'm thinking the tribe and EPA will be pretty satisfied, too,” Renville said. “I don't anticipate any problems.”

Hays Griswold, an on-scene coordinator for the EPA's Emergency Response Program, said the EPA will approve the cleanup if the tribe is satisfied.

“We enforce the cleanup but the property owner has the last word,” he said. “We checked it all along and it's just fine.”

The spill happened June 12 when a 3-inch flow line connecting two small oil wells broke on the oil field operated by Salt Lake City-based FX Energy. The company shut down the line and fixed the leak that day, but oil flowed down the ravine to the Cut Bank Creek and it was not discovered until July 12.

FX has informed the BLM that the company plans to abandon several wells in the Cut Bank Creek drainage as a result of the spill, Judice said. The BLM is considering requiring the company to replace aging flow lines.

The collected oil and water mixture will be recycled by an on-site separator and bags of oil-soaked soil will be taken to a landfill near Conrad that's certified to take hazardous waste, Renville said.

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Information from: Great Falls Tribune, http://www.greatfallstribune.com