Story Created:
Feb 9, 2012 at 10:53 PM CDT
Story Updated:
Feb 9, 2012
It's something seen around the city too often, fracking spills on the roadways. Just this afternoon the spill caused part of highway 359 to be blocked off.
"The product that was spilled was a sludge like material that came from a tractor trailer presumably a bi product from oil fields."
Fire captain Eloy Vega says traffic was detoured this afternoon after a motorist called in to report the spill. Crews immediately started cleaning up the area.
"They noticed an area of about 100 square feet. They applied dirt and sand to the affected area to prevent vehicles from slipping and sliding."
The Executive Director of the Rio Grande International Study Center says those absorbents don't always soak everything up which leads to other problems.
"The concern we have with these spills is that a lot of these fluids...we don't know what's in them. We know they contain possibly hydro carbons other heavy metals."
The main concern Cortez says is the sludge from the fracking sites getting into our water.
"In the case of a rain event like today we don't know if that's going to move into our storm drains."
Cortez and others with the Rio Grande International Study Center are tired of seeing so many careless spills with fracking sludge. They are planning to hold a meeting in San Ignacio to try and stop a future waste dump site from being built there.
"They will potentially be the site for a very large scale 72 acre oilfield waste dump."
Cortez says the dump site will be located only a mile away from the Rio Grande and their only water intake pump.
