Fun with Hazmat

The container after the discharge was halted

If I hadn't said, "This drives me crazy," I wouldn't have spent nearly 3 hours at Colliers Mills with Mike waiting to show DEP Emergency Response where we found a leaking container of gasoline.

Mike & I were at Colliers Mills after spending a fairly productive morning at Assunpink WMA, scanning the lake and walking the dirt road. The first bird I listed today was a Great Horned Owl that Mike showed me as we sped along I-195, roosting in a tree, where he had seen it for most of the last week as he drove into work. Not a bad start for the morning.

The second significant listing of the day was three Trumpeter Swans on Lake Assunpink, presumably the same three birds that have wintered there for the previous three years. One had been reported yesterday, but the trio wasn't especially surprising to find. We spent a little time debating whether they were actually Tundra Swans, but size, bill and neck shape led us to Trumpeter. These birds are somewhat controversial in NJ, since their provenance is unknown, but they don't seem to be of the re-introduced population from New York. And since they have become regular winter visitors, they have been ruled "countable." Mike and I had one much earlier in the year, but this time of year (when nothing much is new and most birds pale before our African list), anything unusual, even if it isn't a 

year bird, piques our interest. 

We didn't have many raptors at Assunpink though the Osprey was late, the Northern Harrier always fun to see and there were a couple of Bald Eagles harassing the ducks. A guy in white car stopped us and asked us where he could photograph eagles--I mumbled under my breath, "I'm sorry, but you can't ask us that, you're not in a pickup truck," but Mike was polite and helpful. 

After Assunpink we made a quick pass through Mercer Corporate Park, home of the rarities, which was home to nothing but a few geese, pigeons and a Red-tailed Hawk. We decided to go down to Colliers Mills. No hunting on Sundays. No hunting, but plenty of guys running their dogs, a Jeep club called "Jeepers Creepers" speeding up and down Success Road, and ATVs and dirt bikes running illegally through the fields, not to mention the aimless wanderings of people out for a Sunday drive--"I wonder what's up this road--oh nothing, well, let's turn around then." 

So we were walking north up the east side of Colliers Mills Lake, heading for the power line cut where I thought it might be quieter and more birdy (though we had already scored a Field Sparrow close to the parking lot--hadn't see one of those in a couple of months) when I saw the big green container pictured above. People dumping stuff in parks and WMAs--"This drives me crazy." I went over to the container, figuring I'd pick it up later on the way back, when I saw that it was leaking. The side said VP Racing Fuel and the liquid smelled like gasoline. The area around the can was stained. There was still a good amount of liquid inside. 

Mike has worked in site remediation for DEP for 30 something years, so he sprang into action, turning the open end uphill to stop the dripping, only to find that the container was cracked at the bottom and was leaking from there too. So he turned the container over 180 degrees and halted the discharge. Then he called WARN-DEP, and reported the incident. 

I figured that was the end of it and that nothing more would happen--and maybe if I had reported it that would be true, but I guess an employee of DEP has a certain amount of gravitas. Anyway, Mike said we should wait. They were going to send both an enforcement officer to relieve him and someone qualified to handle the hazardous material. 

As I had no place else to go and the weather was pleasant I didn't much mind, but after a while staring at a no longer leaking container of gasoline gets a little old, so we walked back to the intersection at Success where we watched the passing parade of fools--including one dolt in a pickup full of ATVs who asked where he could run his machines. We weren't very sympathetic to his plight. Meanwhile, even though Mike had told the dispatcher at DEP that we were on the east side of Colliers Mills Lake, she wrote down Colliers Mills, lake, east side, so the enforcement officer went to Lake Success, 5 miles away, explaining to Mike on the phone that that's where 90% of the incidents take place anyway. Then she was delayed because she had to pull someone out of the sand near the lake. Then she was delayed because she was involved in chasing down the ATVers and dirt bikers. 

At the intersection, while all this excitement was being relayed to us, I remembered that I had smelled gas when we started up the road. I thought it was coming from a noisy pickup truck that was driving behind us, but now we saw a hose on the side of the road we had previously overlooked, along with a lozenge shaped stain in the middle of the dirt road.

With this forensic evidence, we played a little environmental detective: the container originally fell off a vehicle here, cracked at the bottom, started to leak. The perpetrator picked up the leaking container, transported it a couple of hundred yards north up the road, and flung to the side where it would be less likely to be found--but not that less likely. Which is why I started to smell gasoline long before we found the container. 

By now, close to 3 hours had passed, the Jeeper Creepers were congregating at the parking lot, asking each other if they had gotten a ticket, cars, SUVs, and truck were streaming west down Success Road out of the WMA as if in a panic, and, at the same time both a DEP enforcement officer (but not the one we were waiting for) and the Emergency Response Vehicle pulled up. The officer was chasing the off-roaders. He'd caught one but wanted the others. We couldn't really help him with their whereabouts--the only ones we'd seen had already escaped to the west with their machines loaded on the back of trucks. There was also a vehicle on fire somewhere in the WMA just to add to the chaos. 

The emergency responder drove up the road and Mike and I watched him test the site--high concentration of gasoline, big surprise, and stabilize the container with what were essentially wee-wee pads for hazmat. He was going to dig up some of the contaminated sand around the container as well as the lozenge stain down the road and take the hose away too. It was way too late to continue birding, so we took our little list of 18 species and called it a day, happy, sort of, that we had done our little bit for the environment, though the 10 off-roaders still ripping through the fields was as depressing as can be. I must say I was surprised that DEP would come out and clean up so quickly a few gallons of gasoline on a Sunday. Your tax dollars at work and thanks. 

I've picked up and disposed of some big crap at Colliers Mills--a refrigerator box once, a portfolio full of bills and receipts, a hub cap, not to mention about 20 skeets that escaped the shot gun...but this was the first time I needed reinforcements.