Environment: Nightmare on The Monongahela

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The loading operation should have been routine: an enormous storage tank at Ashland Oil's Floreffe, Pa., facility was slowly filling with No. 2 diesel fuel, and everything seemed to be going according to plan. True, the 40-year- old container was being filled for the first time since having been cut up, moved from Cleveland and reconstructed on the site near the Monongahela River. True, the company did not have the required permit from Allegheny County. And true, Ashland Oil had forgone the standard safety practice of testing the tank with a full load of water. But the vessel had passed less stringent tests, and so the loading went forward.

Then, as the 48-ft.-high structure was nearly filled to its capacity of 4 million gal., something went wrong. The tank suddenly burst like a balloon, loosing its contents in a matter of seconds. Some 3.8 million gal. of the oil erupted in a 35-ft.-high tidal wave that quickly overflowed the earthen dike meant to contain such spills. In the 7 degrees cold, 860,000 gal. inundated nearby Route 837. The oil then poured through storm sewers into the Monongahela, a once polluted river that over the past ten years has been painstakingly restored to health, and headed for Pittsburgh, 23 miles downstream.

Thus began one of the nation's worst inland oil spills ever. Within 24 hours, 23,000 people in the Pittsburgh area found themselves without tap water. An additional 750,000 were forced to ration their drinking water, 1,200 families were temporarily evacuated, dozens of factories had to shut down, schools were closed and commercial traffic on the river was halted. The oil entered the Ohio River at Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle, and by week's end the scene had been replayed downriver as far as Steubenville, Ohio, where an ice jam slowed the oil's progress. Wheeling, W. Va., was bracing for the onslaught, and contamination was feared along the Ohio all the way to the Mississippi. The Pennsylvania Fish Commission reported numerous dead fish; ducks and geese, caught in the oil, had to be rescued and washed. Said Ashland Oil Chairman John Hall, who quickly declared his company would comply with federal law by footing the entire cleanup bill: "I expect it will be a multimillion-dollar problem."

While Pittsburgh draws its potable water from the unaffected Allegheny River, some nearby cities and towns on the Monongahela were forced to shut off their river intakes completely. The authorities tried to cope by tapping into the fire hydrants of unpolluted water systems and reopening old wells. Governor Robert Casey ordered out the National Guard to help, and decreed mandatory water conservation with a $200 fine for violators. Most people took the inconvenience good-naturedly. In North Fayette, 17 miles south of Pittsburgh, residents switched to paper plates, postponed the laundry and washed at the homes of friends whose water supply was unaffected. Funeral Director Tom Somma used his hearse to deliver bottled water to shut-ins. The local Iron City brewery brought out "party trucks" -- in effect, giant beer kegs on wheels -- filled with water.