Coast Guard: Beaufort Memorial Hospital will have to pay for oil leak
Published 06/17/2016 11:47 AM EDT
BEAUFORT, S.C. (WJCL) -- The Coast Guard tells WJCL News that it has notified officials at Beaufort Memorial Hospital about the results of a recent testing at the Lady's Island Marina.
The lab results show investigators found the same petroleum-based oil as discovered in the spill at the hospital. They conducted several water samples, and the oils matched and came from the same source: Beaufort Memorial.
The Coast Guard says the hospital will now have to pay for continued cleanup to restore the environment back to its pre-incident status.
At this time, the Coast Guard does not have a total dollar amount for the cleanup, but says they will be giving that information to the hospital once it is gathered.
In late May, fuel oil leaked from inside Beaufort Memorial Hospital into the nearby Beaufort River.
On May 23, nearly 300 gallons of fuel oil leaked in the hospital's boiler room. At that time, the hospital staff contained the leak and alerted the proper authorities, according to the hospital. Out of caution, some areas of the bottom-floor were evacuated and some elective surgeries were also canceled. The South Carolina Department of Environmental Control arrived on scene and cleaned up the remainder of the leaked fuel oil, according to the hospital.
However, hospital officials later learned that cleanup crews likely missed some of the oil gathered in the drain pipes.
"They cleaned up all the fuel from that and went into the floor drains, cleaned those, but it appears that some was actually still residing inside the floor drains beyond where they could clean," said Ed Ricks, vice president and chief information officer at Beaufort Memorial Hospital. "There was a residual amount that the rain water from this weekend was enough to force it through our storm drain system."
Nearby neighbors first spotted the "shimmer" in the Beaufort River and alerted the hospital.
"When we were looking at the boat we noticed a lot of oil floating on the water or a sheen that looked like oil," said Clay Bush, neighbor.
At first, Bush says he blamed the family boat as the source of the oil since it had just undergone maintenance.
"But we checked it out and couldn't find that it was leaking anything and so we didn't know what it was," said Bush.
Bush said he later learned of the oil's origin when he visited the hospital's website.