Oregon Public Broadcasting

As BP tries to stem the flow of at least six million gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, we take a look at an oil cleanup effort closer to home.

Reporter Amelia Templeton visited the mountain town of Skykomish, Washington, where BNSF railway company is trying to remove two million gallons of oil from right under the town's main street. 

It's a cold spring day in Skykomish.

Moving houses in Skykomish.

The rumblings of a dump truck and the shouts of construction workers break the morning quiet. They're getting ready to lift two historic buildings off of their foundations.

Mayor Fred Black has watched this happen many times

Fred Black: "The hydraulic system automatically keeps the building level as it transverses over uneven ground to get where they're going to store it, which will be over here somewhere."

The buildings have to move because the soil underneath them is contaminated. This town of 250 people sits atop an underground plume of oil. Mayor Black explains.

Fred Black: "This was a major rail yard and a refueling yard where they refueled locomotives. So apparently a lot of oil was spilled into the ground right over here in this area where I'm pointing on the other side of the tracks And because of the natural gradient it leached under the ground and eventually ended up out in the Skykomish river."

The refueling yard closed 35 years ago. The Washington Department of Ecology estimates the spill was about two million gallons, the largest in the state.

Charlie Brown: "There was seepage in the river from the time back that I can remember."

Charlie Brown owns the Whistling Post tavern, one of the town's few businesses. He grew up in Skykomish.

Charlie Brown: "If you hit a softball across the dyke and had to go to the river to get it, it always had a little oil sheen on it when you got it back."

Brown says people in town didn't think much about the rainbow slick on the river.

The town's water supply is upstream from the rail yard. Washington's Department of Ecology learned about the contamination twenty years ago.

Brad Petrovich: "For the longest time they didn't know what kind of environmental or human threat there was from the pollution."

Brad Petrovich is with the Department of Ecology. He says decades of studies showed that the contamination was mostly made up of a fuel type called bunker C and diesel oil.

Brad Petrovich: "There was a threat to the water environment in the river which has an impact on a lot of communities downstream. But also the soil."

In 2007 the state reached a clean up agreement with BNSF Railway, which owns the old refueling yard. BNSF paid $5 million in fines and is footing the bill for the town's clean up. It's expected to cost up to $100 million. 

Gus Melonas is a spokesman for the railroad

Gus Melonas: "We're making progress. BNSF is committed to this clean up. We want to see a cleaner Skykomish. We're part of this community."

The clean up process has turned people's lives upside down for five years.

The town is only about six blocks long. Crews have torn up the streets and lifted about 20 homes and business off their foundations. 

Even Charlie Brown's tavern was moved.

Charlie Brown: "That's the first time to my knowledge that the Whistling Post has ever been closed since it opened in 1903."

The railroad compensated Brown for his lost business. And it provided temporary housing for people who were displaced.

Brown supports the clean up. But he says some of his neighbors think the oil should have been left in the ground.

Charlie Brown: "It's been hard to put up with. I mean, just the fact that some days you can't get to your house the same way you did before."

More than 200,000 tons of dirty soil has been removed from Skykomish. It's taken by train cars to a waste dump in Roosevelt, Washington along the Columbia River. Clean fill is brought in.

More than 100,000 gallons of liquid petroleum has been removed and recycled. That's more than the New Carissa spill off the Oregon coast. 

But Petrovich says officials at the Department of Ecology worried that the clean up would cure the disease but kill the patient.

Brad Petrovich: "Yes we have this clean up to oversee. And primarily we need to look at getting the pollutants out of town. But in doing that how are we going to get the contaminants out and not have this dry up into an old ghost town, you know."

So the Department did something unconventional. It spent several million dollars building a new wastewater treatment facility for the town.

Property owners had relied on septic tanks before. Many weren't to code.

That kept property values depressed.

Tavern owner Brown says that even before the clean up, Skykomish was fading away.

Charlie Brown: "It's going to have a facelift it could have never afforded without this. I hear people say, oh well, eventually. No, no. Not eventually it wasn't going to happen. And it is now. And that's somethign a lot of communities will never get."The town's chamber of commerce also received a small planning grant. The community has decided to reinvent itself as a tourist destination for railroad enthusiasts.