Bug Spray Saves Diesel Spiller $7,000+

During a 5 a.m. delivery at a Waco, Texas storefront, our client’s driver backed slowly toward the receiving dock, unaware that a concrete abutment was directly in the path of his passenger-side saddle tank. With a crunch, the tank popped open like a soda can and roughly 100 gallons of diesel fuel spewed onto the concrete surface of the receiving dock lot.
Initial responders for CES reported that on the surface, it appeared to be a fairly routine clean up, but something did not seem right. The size of the mess was much less than what 100 gallons of diesel should have made.

During pressure washing operations on the concrete lot, the clean-up crew discovered a large crack where the diesel had soaked into the soil beneath the lot.

Situations like this usually have a simple but expensive (this site was estimated at $13,000) solution: tear up the parking lot, dispose of the pavement and impacted soil, and then completely resurface the lot.

Over a two week period, the CES incident manager had the site surveyed as a candidate for treatment with a bio-remediating solution.

Bio-remediating solutions –often referred to as “bug sprays” - are usually a combination of a petroleum-busting surfactant and activated petroleum-eating micro-organisms (bugs).
On the Waco site, lab work was done on soil samples to show how much soil was impacted by the fuel. Two treatments of the bug spray were injected through holes drilled in the concrete, 60 days apart. Three months, and two treatments later, lab work showed no detectable diesel fuel in the soil beneath the lot.

While bug sprays are not technically or economically the right answer for most spill sites, contractor costs for this site ran $5,100, giving a total estimated savings of $7,800 over excavation at the time of site closure.