Salt Lake City fire crews and hazardous materials workers were dispatched to a stretch of the Jordan River late Saturday morning to deal with an oil spill.
By early afternoon, however, officials suspected the amount of the leak was likely small. Boom barriers were deployed near North Temple and 10th North to capture what was believed to be light crude oil or diesel fuel.
“It’s hard to say how much was dumped,” Salt Lake City Fire Battalion Chief Mark Carson said, noting that a small amount of petroleum can leave a relatively large sheen on moving water.
Regardless, he said, containing and cleaning up the oil was not expected to pose a problem. “There’s no threat to wildlife or drinking water,” Carson said.
Initial indications were that the oil was introduced into the river near a Salt Lake City public utilities pump house in the area of an Interstate 80 overpass. While officials planned to inspect the pump house Saturday to determine if any fuel may have leaked from there, Carson did not initially think the facility was the source.
“This appears to be a one-time release by someone dumping something into the river” rather than a sustained leak from a pipeline, he said.
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