Oil Spill in Utah

Chevron is expected to unveil a cleanup plan this morning, after a day in which the company focused on containing an oil leak that fouled Red Butte Creek and Liberty Park pond, in hopes of keeping the toxic spill from reaching the Great Salt Lake. An oily sheen could be seen Sunday afternoon on the surface of the Jordan River as it flowed through Rose Park Golf Course. But Utah Division of Water Quality scientists did not visually detect any oil farther downstream at a small dam in the lake's marshlands, almost seven miles from the source of the leak in a Chevron pipeline on Salt Lake City's east bench. "That's good news that it hasn't reached the Great Salt Lake," DWQ Director Walt Baker said of the critical migratory bird habitat, the ultimate recipient of whatever flows down normally docile Red Butte Creek. The creek's character changed sometime early in the weekend when a buried, 10-inch diameter Chevron pipeline carrying crude from northwestern Colorado's oil fields sprung a major leak...more