Officials: Leaking oil no environmental threat

Friday, Dec. 22, 2000 | 10:05 a.m.

Fuel oil leaking out of a storage tank at Nevada Power Co.'s Sunrise Station east of Las Vegas poses no threat to the environment, utility and state environmental officials said today.

Thousands of gallons of oil are trickling out of a 1.2 million gallon fuel tank at the 37-year-old power generating station, about 15 miles east of Las Vegas.

A Nevada Power worker spotted a corroded pipe on Sunday. The tank was half full at the time.

The power company has hired H2O Environmental to clean up the fuel oil by mixing it with sand, then removing it and hauling it off for incineration.

The utility reported the spill of No. 6 fuel oil to the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection on Monday, as required by law.

The thick fuel oil must be heated before it can flow through a pipeline to the power generators 300 feet away.

The fuel oil is spilling into a plastic-lined basin surrounded by soil mounds. Thirteen feet beneath the basin lies a shallow ground water layer, which the state is monitoring, NDEP Corrective Action Supervisor Jennifer Carr said today.

The Corrective Actions Branch will continue to oversee the cleanup operation because it is near the ground water and the Las Vegas Wash. The wash drains into Lake Mead, Southern Nevada's major drinking water supply.

Because the oil is so thick and Southern Nevada's winter temperatures have been cool, it poses little threat to the water supplies, Carr said.