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Health officials are asking for the public's help to figure out who dumped a huge amount of sulfuric acid alongside a busy freeway. It's going on five days since it happened.
The I-80 onramp at Saltair is still closed and may stay that way another week as cleanup efforts continue. Meanwhile, authorities say whoever did it could face criminal charges.
Many companies in the Salt Lake Valley handle sulfuric acid. It has many uses in industry and farming. One of the biggest suppliers, Kennecott, is situated close to the spill, but the company says the finger of blame seems to point in another direction.
Teresa Gray, with the Salt Lake Valley Health Department, said, "It would be an illegal disposal of a hazardous material and that would be a felony."
Gray says cleaning up and repairing a spill of around 100 gallons of sulfuric acid is no easy task. UDOT is removing the dirt but can't get a landfill to take the tainted soil until Thursday. Then they have to repair the damaged shoulders of the road.
"They would have to pay for the cleanup costs that occurred on site, and there is the possibility of jail time," Gray said.
Video from Chopper Five last Friday makes the spill pretty obvious. A vehicle spilled the highly-concentrated, very powerful sulfuric acid on the onramp and into adjacent vegetation. Authorities have few clues and are relying on the public.
"Right now we don't have any that point to a specific person. So if anyone saw anything that may have taken place out there, please contact the health department," Gray said.
Because of its location, the ramp gets very little traffic, only a few hundred vehicles a day. And, according to the Utah Department of Transportation, most of it is Kennecott related. Kennecott Copper has major facilities nearby. Sulfuric Acid is a waste product the company sells in large quantities. But four days after the spill, the health department still hadn't asked Kennecott for shipping manifests.
"That's the next step that we need to follow up on. There's a lot of information we are looking in to," Gray said.
Kennecott confirmed to us a truckload of sulfuric acid left the facility less than a half hour before the spill was reported. But the company says it couldn't have been to blame. "We have checked, and that truck left our place at a certain weight and arrived at its destination in Idaho at the exact same weight," Kennecott spokeswoman Jana Kettering said.
Four other acid trucks presumably did not use that onramp. They left in the hours before the spill, all heading in a different direction.
"That is a public road off a very busy interstate. Granted, Kennecott does use that road to a large degree, but so do, the public can too," Kettering said.
In fact, one theory is that a driver passing through the area pulled off I-80, dumped some acid and then moved on. Investigators say they know it had to be a truck, just from the sheer volume of sulfuric acid that spilled on ramp. Until more information comes in, the investigation is stuck. If you can help, call the Health Department at 313-6700.
E-mail: hollenhorst@ksl.com
E-mail: mrichards@ksl.com
