Rise in ethanol leads to close look at spills

LINCOLN – In 2005, 25 Brentwood, Calif., residents spent Labor Day night in a junior high school shelter after an overturned railroad tanker spilled ethanol into storm sewers.

Another railroad spill prompted evacuation of homes, a mental health facility and a middle school in South Hutchinson, Kan., that same year.

In 2006, a highway was closed and residents south of St. Paul, Minn., were evacuated when 30,000 gallons of ethanol spilled from derailed tanker cars.

These accidents and others, as well as the rapid increase in transport of ethanol across the country, has led to an increased focus on the impact of ethanol spills.

“When it happens and it’s close to a town, a spill creates some inconveniences, to say the least,” said Roy Spalding, a hydrochemist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Spalding is coordinating a multistate study of ethanol spill cleanups.

Omaha World-Herald