State determines cause of fuel leak at Mexico hospital

Officials with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources have determined the cause of the large diesel fuel spill at a hospital in Mid-Missouri.

Tuesday, Abc 17 News reported an underground storage tank filled with diesel fuel leaked on the property of SSM Health Saint Mary’s hospital in Mexico.

According to DNR, about 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel were released from the leak. Some of that fuel got into a stream north of the hospital, where crews from a company called Environmental Restoration were working Wednesday.

Mexico residents said they are concerned to see clean up crews in the stream.

“A lot of the kids around this neighborhood play in the creek and play around the creek and stuff like that, so are they going to end up getting sick?” Mexico resident Jon Boe said. “This feeds off into drinking water, so what’s going to happen there are they going to do a boil order so nobody gets sick?” Boe said.

But residents do not need to worry, officials said. Becki Collier with St. Mary’s Hospital said the Environmental Restoration crews and DNR contained the fuel so it will not spread.

“As soon as we were made aware of the situation, we contacted the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Restoration,” Collier said. “DNR is overseeing the cleanup and they have been on site since we became aware of the situation.Thankfully it’s not affected our patients at all. And there was never a risk to them or the residents of the Mexico community.”

DNR officials said there have not been any reports of fish killed, so there is not a large amount of fuel in the stream.

Some fuel from the spill also got into the city’s wastewater treatment plant through sanitary and storm sewers. The Director of Mexico Public Works Kensey Russell said employees at the plant noticed it right away when they came into work Tuesday morning, as the fuel is dyed red to stand out.

Workers caught it in time, so there should not be any impact to the public or users of the system, he said.

“It takes about six days for a drop of water that enters the plant to get out of the plant,” Russell said. “And so the fuel was contained there. We’ve been able to use some absorbent pads and booms to clean it up.”

St. Mary’s Hospital said the piece of equipment with a broken flow indicator that caused the leak has since been fixed and tested to avoid a fuel spill from happening again.