Cleanup from oil spill at Liberty Park pond complete

SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City's worst oil spill in history still stings for the people most directly affected, but there are substantial signs of restoration.

A hole in a Chevron pipeline spilled 33,000 gallons of crude oil into Red Butte Creek on June 12, 2010. The massive leak went undetected until the next morning, contaminating Red Butte Creek and flowing into the pond at Liberty Park, which was fenced off shortly after the spill.

A segment of the Jordan River was also shut down to the public for several weeks while cleanup efforts continued.

Since that time, Chevron spent $2 million to scoop up 10,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment out of the pond and restore it.

"This basically has been a big detriment to the community," said Salt Lake City Public Utilities Director Jeff Niermeyer.

Roughly a quarter of the park was closed to the public for nearly an entire year.

Niermeyer worked closely with Chevron throughout the cleanup. Restoration work continues along the creek and in Liberty Park, and he says crews have replaced the concrete wall in the pond and are now in the home stretch.

"There's going to be some confirmation sampling on some water quality in the next week, but everything is looking good," Niermeyer said. "Essentially the cleanup is all done, and now what we're doing is the restoration from the damage that was done during the cleanup."

Initially, Chevron was supposed to finish April 1, but wet weather slowed progress. That disappointed the city, but they insisted the work be done properly.

The company says the cleanup is now complete. The city is satisfied, and the fence will come down before May 14. But is the public satisfied?

Salt Lake City resident Marina Riedel lives along the creek and has seen the damage — and cleanup — firsthand. "I feel like they've done everything that they probably should do to clean it up, but it's still not perfect," she said.

Upstream, Riedel is still trying to assess the long-term damage to the creek in her yard.