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As Water Samples Analyzed, Crews Monitor Oil Spill Site Along McKenzie River

Brian Bull
/
KLCC

Crews with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality are on-site along the McKenzie River, following Monday’s oil spill from International Paper’s Springfield mill. As KLCC’s Brian Bull reports, access to three boat ramps remain closed until further notice.

BRIAN BULL STANDUP: “I’m standing here at the Hayden Bridge Boat Ramp, where buoys are in place, and I can see a containment boom 50, 60 yards down from the boat ramp. 

Credit Brian Bull / KLCC
/
KLCC
Workers with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and industrial clean-up services company Clean Harbors gather near the Hayden Bridge boat-ramp. The ramp is off-limits until further notice, while containment and monitoring efforts continue.

"There are some employees with the DEQ monitoring the situation. Again it’s an 8-mile stretch that people have been warned against, from here at Hayden Bridge all the way to Armitage Park in Eugene.”

“We haven’t decided on any potential enforcement action at this point,” says the DEQ’s Katherine Benenati.  She tells KLCC that her agency is analyzing water samples taken from where 200 gallons of hydraulic oil from the International Paper mill spilled into the McKenzie, and further downstream.

Credit Brian Bull / KLCC
/
KLCC
A barricade tells local residents that the Hayden Bridge boat ramp - as well as two others along the McKenzie River - are closed until further notice.

“To see if they’re at levels that are higher than what we’d want and allow in the river. We are also evaluating how to clean that pipe, and what to do with the water that’s in it, currently.”

Benenati says they may get results Friday. An EWEB official says the spill hasn’t affected drinking water.

Copyright 2018, KLCC.

Brian Bull is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Oregon, and remains a contributor to the KLCC news department. He began working with KLCC in June 2016.   In his 27+ years as a public media journalist, he's worked at NPR, Twin Cities Public Television, South Dakota Public Broadcasting, Wisconsin Public Radio, and ideastream in Cleveland. His reporting has netted dozens of accolades, including four national Edward R. Murrow Awards (22 regional),  the Ohio Associated Press' Best Reporter Award, Best Radio Reporter from  the Native American Journalists Association, and the PRNDI/NEFE Award for Excellence in Consumer Finance Reporting.
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