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• Friday, February 10, 2012

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Frog Creek, one of the creeks contaminated when a fuel tanker overturned on Interstate 80 on May 26, will be monitored to determine the extent of the environmental damage caused by the 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel that spilled. The health of small aquatic insects in the creek will be an essential indicator of the fuel spill’s impact on the tributaries to Donner Lake.

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Donner Summit Fuel Spill Damages Will Be Borne by Aquatic Insects

Small aquatic insects that are vital links in a Sierra Nevada stream’s web of life will likely bear the brunt of the damage from a fuel tanker wreck that spilled approximately 3,000 gallons of diesel across Interstate 80 and onto the hillside above Donner Lake on May 26.

The majority of the diesel was trapped in the median between lanes on Interstate 80, and cleanup crews have excavated the diesel-soaked soil and carted it off for disposal. But some of the fuel made it down a culvert and into the drainages that lead to Summit Creek and eventually Donner Lake. Hand crews are expected to continue careful removal of contaminated soil on the hillside through the summer, according to Alexia Retallack of the Office of Spill Response and Prevention at the California Department of Fish and Game.

The true toll of the fuel spill will take months to assess, but that assessment will be keyed by macroinvertebrates including insects like mayfly and stonefly nymphs, which are the most accurate indicators of a fuel spill’s damage because of their relative immobility. Unlike fish and other animals that can flee an area that is contaminated, macroinvertebrates move little within a stream corridor. If past studies of the toxicity of fuel spills are any indication, Summit Creek and other waters tainted by the diesel will take months to recover. But within a year, the creek’s insect population will likely have rebounded.

That’s what researchers found in a large upstate New York fuel spill where derailed locomotives dropped over 5,000 gallons of diesel into a premier trout stream. The die-off of aquatic insects was dramatic — there were 90 percent fewer macroinvertebrates downstream of the spill than upstream, as well as a much less diverse population of insects. But within a year the insects were back, according to research published in Freshwater Biology.

The positive news for Summit Creek is that the stream was contaminated by diesel only briefly, according to Retallack, and quickly showed undetectable levels of diesel. More troubling is Summit Creek’s history of repeated fuel contamination. In 1997 and 2005, the trans–Sierra Nevada fuel pipeline that borders Summit Creek leaked, sending significant amounts of fuel downstream before the leak was detected. The pipeline leaked again in 2006, but this time the leak was further up Donner Summit and away from the creek.

The repeated contamination of the creek is a function of its location on the most popular east-west route over the Sierra Nevada mountains — where tanker trucks regularly encounter snow-slicked roads and where active tectonic plates and rugged terrain have led to a history of fuel leaks on the 1950s–pipeline traversing Donner Pass.

One good thing has come out of the repeated fuel spills; after the 1997 Santa Fe Pacific fuel pipeline leak that polluted Summit Creek, a group of Truckee citizens came together to form the Truckee River Aquatic Monitors. The group, working with the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, volunteered to collect important water quality data on creeks throughout the Truckee River watershed, according to Beth Christman of the Truckee River Watershed Council. In 2002, TRAM merged with the TRWC, and the comprehensive monitoring of local streams continues today, giving water quality officials important baseline data on local streams that can be used to determine the magnitude of the damage of something like the Donner Summit fuel spill.

Unfortunately, because Summit Creek and the other creeks impacted by the May 26 spill are seasonal creeks, they are not included in the monitoring program, according to Christman.

A biological assessment team from the California Department of Fish and Game will monitor the creeks in the coming months. The assessment will be used to gauge the spill’s damage and to determine the size of the bill that will be sent to Mountain Valley Petroleum, the fuel trucking company responsible for the accident.