bp cleaning up 25,000-gallon gasoline spill in Washington state (U.S.)
(Reuters) - bp has been working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and local officials since Sunday to clean up a roughly 25,000-gallon gasoline spill from its Olympic Pipeline near Mount Vernon in Washington state.
Nearly 7,000 gallons had been recovered, according to the latest update on Wednesday, which added that at least one American beaver, one pine siskin bird, and one mallard duck died due to the spill.
The leak was caused by a tubing failure inside a concrete vault that connected one of the pipelines to a pressure sensor, and the main pipeline was shut down by Monday after detecting a loss in pressure.
Around 2,100 feet (640 meters) of boom remained deployed to contain the spill and no gasoline or sheen has been seen on the Skagit River, while State Route 534 reopened to one-way traffic, according to the bp and the EPA.
The Olympic Pipeline had ruptured in June 1999, spilling over 230,000 gallons of gasoline that caught fire near Bellingham, Washington, and killed three young people.
The explosion of bp's Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 led to the largest oil spill in U.S. history that left 11 rig workers dead and caused $70 B in damages.
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