Photo by George Lauby Water spills onto Front St., June 16

Photo by George Lauby The same area from another angle.

Photo by George Lauby Water saturated area where trees have died, June 16.

Photo by George Lauby Water pond along Front Road, west of the Red Barn convenience store. The Buffalo Bill Ave. overpass is in the distance.

Bailey Yard runoff needs to be cleaned up, much moreso than the runoff from roofs at North Platte homes, according to a retired North Platte well digger.

FREE Mobile Banking NOW AVAILABLE!

Environmentally minded officials are promoting backyard-size rain gardens, but they are not nearly big enough to satisfy Milo Freeman.

Freeman wants the runoff from Bailey Yard cleaned up. He said runoff from the world’s biggest train yard carries diesel fuel and possibly other contaminants, and evidence backs him up.

After several weeks of steady rains this year, runoff water pooled over a big drainpipe along Front St. After a series of steady rains filled the pools until they spilled into the street, carrying a thin film of diesel fuel on top.

The big drainpipe is old and probably leaks at the joints, Freeman said. The pipe run parallel to the tracks on the north side of Bailey Yard. Near the Buffalo Bill Ave. overpass, water saturates the ground. Dead grass and dead trees in the windbreak beside the tracks attest to the problem.

As recently as June 18, a pool spilled over the curb into Front St.

At that time, several environmental groups were promoting residential “rain gardens” --gentle depressions that collect rain water to keep it from running over the curb. They said the runoff carries hazardous chemicals, fuel and oil into the streets, storm gutters and eventually, streams and rivers.

They had a plan for homes, but not for industrial-size runoff, said Cindy Kreifels of the Groundwater Foundation.

The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality is not addressing the problem on Front St. either.

The NDEQ monitors groundwater in and around Bailey Yard, but not wastewater after it leaves the yard.

“We’re working on several sites in Bailey Yard,” said Quinn Kirkac, a geologist with the Petroleum and Assessment and Remediation division of the NDEQ. “Runoff water (in the yard) is piped through underground lines to a wastewater treatment plant there. Where it goes from there, I really don’t know.”

Freeman said the pipe carries yard runoff east along Front St., then crosses below Bailey Yard, and then runs parallel to the north side of the tracks. It eventually empties into a concrete ditch that heads out of town toward the Platte River.

Freeman fears the fuel-contaminated water leaches into the groundwater, contaminating shallow wells.

He said lots of relatively shallow wells were drilled in North Platte during the 1960s and 1970s that were from 60-90 feet deep. He helped dig them.

The NDEQ is monitoring groundwater and private wells near Bailey Yard, Kirkac said. So far, investigators have not found groundwater contamination in any private wells that serve homes or business near Bailey Yard.

UP’s Bailey Yard encompasses 2,850 acres, extending west from the city limits about four miles. The diesel shop, where locomotives are serviced, repaired and fueled, in about two miles west of the city limits.

In that fueling area, catch pans are used to catch spills, Kirkac said. However, there have been fuel spills in other parts of the yard. UP is actively remediating that contamination, and the NDEQ is monitoring the remediation.

“They’ve recovered quite a lot of diesel fuel, but they have a long way to go,” Kirkac said, but added that the railroad had been “very proactive moving forward with the cleanups.”

“When they have a spill they report it and take immediate measures to clean it up," Kirkac said. "Their practices have been good.”

EPA report

An EPA report published in 2003 said there had been more than 90 spills or petroleum releases at Bailey Yard between 1981 and 2003 and that UP reported 45 spills just between 1981 and 1992.

The report said regular railroad operations resulted in spillage of fuel and heavy oil to soils for many years.

The EPA went to work, taking hundreds of samples, and in June 2003 ordered UP to test groundwater and soil for contamination.

In 2005, more than 3,000 gallons spilled into a contamination pond near the diesel shop after heavy rains overflowed an oil containment basin. UP started the cleanup immediately.

Krikac told the Bulletin this week that the railroad is cleaning two major spills that contaminated the groundwater -- one near the diesel shop and the other further east.

Krikac also said that while groundwater underneath Bailey Yards is impacted by spills, there was no evidence that the petroleum was moving very far along the water table. The spills have contaminated soil and water as deep as 10-12 feet, and the contamination drifts to the southeast, but it moves slowly, only a few feet a year.

EPA survey says, not too bad

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has conducted an extensive survey of North Platte groundwater.

Since 2002, the EPA collected 439 groundwater samples in North Platte, dug 119 temporary wells, sampled seven municipal wells, 28 private wells and three irrigation wells; taken 60 soil samples, five surface water samples, 44 tree core samples, eight indoor air samples as well as samples from the city’s sewer system.

While some samples turned up contaminants above minimum standards, none of the contaminants were in the dangerous range or over the maximum standards, the EPA said.

In September 2006, Melvin Brown, the EPA’s superfund remedial project manager from Kansas City, told the North Platte city council that the minimum standard is low, only .5 milligrams per liter. He compared it to finding a nickel in a stack of $10 million cash.

Brown pointed out that the contaminants that were found only affect shallow wells. He said city drinking water is safe, because city wells go 300-feet deep, and draw water below the first layers of underground water.

Brown said the EPA had found trichloroethene (TCE) and tetracholoroethene (PCE) in the water, both cancer-causing agents that were used in solvents, anesthetics and the dry cleaning process, before TCE and PCE were found to be hazardous.

Brown didn’t say anything then about diesel fuel.

He told the council that affected areas seemed to come from the locations of old dry cleaners but that the EPA had difficulty pinpointing them all.

In April 2007, the city council agreed not to seek federal cleanup money under the EPA’s superfund program.

North Platte Mayor Keith Richardson said “everyone agrees that the city’s drinking water is safe” and that well water is tested regularly.

Richardson said joining the Superfund list had not necessarily helped areas that had been contaminated. He said other cities experienced “extraordinary delays” achieving remedies and closures at their sites.

But Freeman said he’s heard and seen indications of groundwater contamination from Bailey Yard several times during his career.

He is far from satisfied.

“UP has several ways to quit spilling fuel and contaminating water,” he said. “I want this water cleaned up for my grandkids and great-grandkids.”

Parts of this report were first published in the June 24 print edition of the North Platte Bulletin.