No anticipated impacts from refinery leak

Alexis Barker
NLJ Reporter
 
 
A wastewater leak that occurred at the rear of the Wyoming Refining Co. on Feb. 12 is not expected to have any negative impacts on public health or the environment, according to a refinery spokesman. 
“The leak was treated wastewater. We have a discharge permit for the wastewater out of the final pond,” said Mike Baldwin, manager of health, safety, security and environment at the refinery. “It is treated to meet the permit conditions, so it is not a hazard to health or environment. It is basically water; there are no hydrocarbons with that.” 
According to Baldwin, the leak occurred sometime Tuesday morning in a line that takes the treated wastewater to an evaporation pond. He said that officials at the refinery are still trying to come up with estimates on how much of the wastewater was actually released. 
“It is hard to know with the size of the leak. We do calculations, but those numbers are still unknown,” Baldwin said. 
He said that the leak is still under investigation but that he does not anticipate anything unusual to be found. 
“The refinery takes all releases seriously. Once we were notified of the leak, we shut down the line and repaired it,” Baldwin said. “Because of the location and the leak being water, there was lots of ice buildup on the bike path, but we worked with the city to shut sections of it down (in order) to put down salt and remove the ice so it was not a hazard.”