Oil Spill Cleanup With Water Recovery

We got a call for an oil spill cleanup with water recovery last week.

Oil spill ran down the alley for 41/2 blocks

A delivery truck leaked oil for more than four blocks down an alley. His engine eventually ran out of oil and seized up.

The City of Longmont called us to clean up the 4½ blocks of oil drips before it got tracked all over and made a bigger mess.

We adjusted our schedule to get two pressure washing trucks with water recovery trailers up there the next day.

We quickly found we wouldn’t be able to recover the water as we washed. The oil spill was in an alley that had been finished with brick pavers. The water ran into the polymeric sand between the pavers before it could be sucked up.

Blocking the storm drain

We blocked the storm drain below the surface to catch all the oily water we could. But very little of it had filtered through the subsurface to reach the storm drains.

When the alley was originally covered with pavers, part of the reasoning was to filter the rainwater before it reached the storm drain laid a few feet below the surface.

It would also help reduce flooding by preventing large amounts of water running into the storm sewer all at once. Unfortunately, it also made it impossible to collect the water before it ran into the subsurface.

pressure washing with water recovery

There were three inspectors on site watching and they could see we did everything possible to recover the water. There just was no way to collect it on this kind of surface without sucking up most of the sand which they wanted to prevent.

Water recovery isn’t a perfect science and sometimes you can only do your best. We’ve had many inspectors watch our process over the years and none of them have ever complained. We’ve received nothing but positive comments about doing quality work.

If you need pressure washing with water recovery, call a company that works with the inspectors to make sure the job meets their standards.