That sucks.

[dalesql]

Today, at work, I saw something really sucky. One of the trucks delivering to another tenant in our building managed to dump an entire saddle tank of deisel fuel in the parking lot. Said diesel fuel, of course, flowed into the storm drain. whoops, more than 50 gallons. Not only call in a spill team to clean it up, but big enough that it triggers EPA reporting requirements. major PITA for them.

But the cleanup team from Clean Harbors is out in the parking lot cleaning up the spill. Sorbent on the trail of fuel across the parking lot, plus they were getting ready to suck up the stuff in the storm drain. Which is a sucky job, calling for a machine with a lot of suck. Like this:
http://services.swsenvironmental.com/image?&cid=4398&plpver=10&prodid=1017&itemid=1016

They were sucking all manner of junk up out of the storm drain. The thing that really made me notice was the weird sound it made, sucking all that air through a long and really large diameter tube. It was almost musical, and really loud.

So that's how my day sucked today.

Comments

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

I would have thought that (dumping a saddle tank) was hard to do. What did they do puncture it? Or have someone puncture it for them?

[dalesql.livejournal.com]

Beats me. That part happened sometime in the afternoon. We had no idea anything had happened until I was walking out to my car to go home.

Probably just rusted through. Fuel tanks do accumulate a little bit of water in normal use. Moist air gets inside as fuel is drawn off, and then the moisture condenses and flows to the bottom of the tank where it cannot evaporate. If you don't add some alcohol every so often, or siphon out the water, it just stays there and promotes rust. Or the structure that is supporting the tank rusted through? Rocks and suchlike get kicked up by the tires and bounce off the bottom of the tank, once in a while they find a weak enough spot.