The EPA has reached an agreement with Keystone oil pipeline operator TC Energy to clean up last month’s 14,000 barrel oil spill into a creek in rural northeast Kansas not far from the Nebraska State line.
The EPA order requires the company’s TC Oil Pipeline Operations arm to recover oil and oil-contaminated soil and vegetation and contain the further spread of oil in the creek.
The spill, roughly 588,000 gallons or about 14,000 bathtubs full, was the largest onshore in 9 years and larger than the 22 previous spills on the Keystone system combined. Its cause remains undetermined.
TC Energy, formerly TransCanada, and government officials have said drinking water supplies were not affected, no one was evacuated, and most of the Keystone system was back in operation in 8 days.
Democratic U-S Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington is demanding a review of the company’s permit for operating sections of the pipeline at pressures the exceed the typical maximum permitted levels. .
The chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee told the deputy administrator of the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration the spill “is no surprise.”