ExxonMobil To Clean Up Spilled Oil In Sag Harbor

Excavation crews working for oil giant ExxonMobil will begin digging up Bay Street in Sag Harbor Village later this month as part of an effort to clean up the residues of oil that seeped into the ground decades ago from a former waterfront fuel depot.

Starting late (this) week, the work crews will begin a systematic excavation of a stretch of Bay Street near the intersection with Burke Street, where oily water bubbled up from the ground in the spring of 2010 after heavy rains raised water table levels. Surveys taken following the discovery revealed that the ground under a portion of Bay Street adjacent the former fuel depot was contaminated with remnants of the once-large plume beneath the depot.

The excavation will be done in sections, according to officials from the State Department of Environmental Conservation who are overseeing the project, totaling about 950 tons of soil. The walls of each section of excavated ground will be bolstered with steel as the oil-soaked dirt is removed and replaced with new soil. The contaminated soil will be stockpiled, dried and ultimately stored at a site off Long Island.

According to a DEC spokesman, the soil will first be stored in the parking lot of the Breakwater Yacht Club to allow water to drain out of it. The water that runs from the soil will be discharged into Sag Harbor Cove. If monitoring of the discharge water shows signs of oil or turbidity, the discharge will be stopped, the DEC said.

The excavation work is expected to take four to six weeks to complete.

It is the second time the owner of the former fuel depot, which was on the property that is now occupied by the Breakwater Yacht Club, has had to fund a major cleanup effort in the area. After the depot closed in the mid-1980s, the property was discovered to be highly contaminated with spilled petroleum products. Mobil Oil, which had purchased the small fuel company that operated the fuel depot, led a major excavation of the depot land and portions of Bay Street. The soil was passed through an incinerator to burn off any petroleum residue and then placed back in the ground.

But surveys last year showed that the plume of spilled oil emanating from the fuel depot apparently extended farther than originally thought.

The excavation was put off until this fall to avoid interfering with summertime traffic on Bay Street, and crews are expected to be done with their work and the street restored before the holiday season gets into full swing, Mayor Brian Gilbride said this week.

First published by The Southampton Press, October 12, 2011