Canaan House Fuel Spill Cleanup Concluding

By Andrew Gorosko

The major environmental cleanup project at Canaan House at Fairfield Hills — where 4,550 gallons of #2 heating fuel inadvertently spilled onto the ground in early December — is finally winding down.

The cleanup site, where well over 400 tons, or 800,000 pounds, of contaminated soil was excavated and carted off for incineration and cleansing, stood silent this week for the first time since the morning of Monday, December 8, when the massive fuel spill was discovered, having occurred over the snowy weekend of December 6–7.

Two road intersections near Canaan House, which had been barricaded with chain-link fencing, have been reopened to traffic. Two other intersections lying behind Shelton House remained barricaded to traffic on Wednesday.

 The broad combined driveway/parking area, near the entrance to the public school system offices in Canaan House, remains closed to traffic. That regraded area is settling, following the extensive excavation work. It is slated for repaving when the weather improves.

Town Public Health Director Donna McCarthy said February 25 that although the excavation project has concluded, some landscaping and drainage work may yet be done at the site.

Groundwater quality will be monitored in the area near the fuel spill to learn whether subsurface conditions pose any pollution hazards, Ms McCarthy said. Groundwater monitoring will continue for at least one year, and possibly longer.

A huge pile of excavated soil, which had stood behind Shelton House for the past several weeks, has been trucked away from the site.

Excavation near the spill site recovered as much of the spilled fuel as was practically possible, Ms McCarthy said. Although some spilled fuel found its way beneath the foundation of Canaan House, structural concerns would make it impractical to recover that fuel, she said.

Ms McCarthy has served as the town’s representative in conferences on the environmental cleanup.

“It was a lot of oil. It was huge quantity of oil,” Ms McCarthy said of the thousands of gallons of fuel that inadvertently spilled from Canaan House’ s external heating system.

The cleanup project was complicated by the presence of many underground utility lines at Fairfield Hills, some of which were not well mapped, she said.

The spilled fuel was intercepted and recovered before it was able to make its way into the Pootatuck Aquifer, a local underground source of drinking water, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

The overall effect of the fuel spill on a tributary of Deep Brook, where brook trout breed naturally, likely will not be known until later this year, Ms McCarthy said. That area is one of eight places in the state where trout still breed naturally. During the spill, fuel was carried about 500 yards from Canaan House via an underground storm sewer to that brook.

Fairfield Hills is a former state psychiatric hospital, which closed in December 1995. The town plans to pay the state $3.9 million to buy 189 acres, including 17 major buildings, at Fairfield Hills, including Canaan House. The fuel spill and other issues have delayed that sale.

If nothing were done to remedy the fuel spill, the fuel would eventually find its way into the subsurface water table and into area surface waters. State cleanup costs are expected to run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.