City, county, water district and PG
&
amp;E officials spent Friday afternoon cleaning a herbicide
spill after rainfall carried weed killer from the utility’s site at
Hale and Main avenues into the nearby storm drain.
City, county, water district and PG&E officials spent Friday afternoon cleaning a herbicide spill after rainfall carried weed killer from the utility’s site at Hale and Main avenues into the nearby storm drain.
Santa Clara County Fire Department Battalion Chief Ron Vega said their dispatch center received a call from a citizen at 12:09 p.m. The citizen noticed a green substance running toward the creek.
This morning, a subcontractor had sprayed Roundup at the utility land, located at west of the creek and south of Main Avenue. But instead of soaking into the ground, the liquid was carried away by the rainfall.
By 3:30 p.m., PG&E had a utility truck on site to remove the contaminated water.
Vega said it was “not a significant amount” of herbicide.
“We’re standing on as much junk and gook as that probably is,” Vega said from the parking lot across the street from the site. “But it wasn’t intended to be there, so they’re cleaning it up.”
PG&E’s environmental field specialist Lin Leung said she didn’t know how much of the weed killer Roundup had been used. While she said it was a dilution, and only used on visible weeds on the site, the water surrounding was a cloudy green substance.
County firefighters and PG&E workers scrambled to lay sandbags to contain the runoff that was reaching the storm drain. Stormwater, and any water runoff into the creek, is never treated and eventually leads to Monterey Bay.
