Tomato Soup

A diesel-fuel spill is usually just a small part of a larger-scale emergency event such as a multi-vehicle collision or a load-shift roll-over. In the flurry of phone calls and digital messages, control of environmental operations is often placed on the back burner and eventually, by default, relinquished to a random third party. This month's S-File is a typical demonstration of how easily the spill clean up phase of a wreck recovery can be mishandled. It almost cost our client an extra $10,000!

It was like an opening scene from the 1970's murder-mystery Columbo: a produce truck hauling tomatoes along a winding mountain road was forced to the shoulder by an inconsiderate passenger car passing on the left. As the driver lost control in the gravel, he realized that he was approaching a tight curve and decided to bail out of the cab. The rig careened off the edge of the sharp bank at the edge of the road shoulder and wrecked out in a rocky ravine that turned out to be part of an army base artillery range.

Due to insurance policy complications, the rig sat in the ravine for nearly a month, filled with rotting tomatoes, before the wrecking service winched it back to the road and hauled it, tomatoes and all, away. The rocky mountain setting and danger of latent explosives made safe removal difficult. One of the fuel tanks was ruptured by the wrecker service as the tractor was pulled up the steep incline to the shoulder.

At that point, the wrecking service was, for all intents and purposes, in charge of handling the environmental clean up. They had contacted a local environmental clean up company -- we'll call them Contractor A -- to assess the site and produce a bid on clean up operations when CES was asked by the insurance company to step in.

CES learned that Contractor A had bid the job and requested to be copied on the bid. Their operations estimate totaled $15,500 for excavation and disposal operations. Based on his research and developed understanding of the scope of the spill, the CES incident manager declined the bid and called out two of our pre-qualified contractors to bid the same site: Contractor B and Contractor C.

Contractor B, estimated using roughly the same scope of work as Contractor A, but total project costs were about $6,000. Contractor C thought that a significant area of the diesel impact had not penetrated the soil to a depth requiring excavation. They thoughtfully proposed that this portion could be treated with a bio-remediant such as Microblaze. Total estimated project cost, not including closure lab work, was bid at $3,000.

Current projected costs, taking into account site-closure lab work and disposal operations, puts Contractor C more than $10,000 less than the default contractor who had been randomly picked from the wrecking company's Rolodex.

In dealing with emergency clean up operations, a company rarely has the opportunity to take competing bids on a spill clean as in this unique situation. This month's S-File, however, clearly demonstrates the risks of dealing with wild-card contractors in an uncontrolled scenario.

Don't let your spill get away from you! CES has a strong, well-established system for matching contractors to spill sites. We base our contractor dispatch decisions on region, the contractor's demonstrated abilities, and our industry knowledge and experience. Using our experienced staff ensures that your organization stays in control of the clean up project and that it will be handled by the best available professional environmental clean up crews in the business. Not by a random, part-time organization looking to justify and fund recent equipment purchases.