City and state crews clean up oil spill in Patterson Park

by Mary Helen Sprecher
newsroom@baltimoreguide.com

The words ‘fuel spill’ are usually used to describe the cause of a traffic jam. Last week, however, those same words were the reason for haz-mat activity in — Patterson Park?
According to Kia McLeod, public information officer for Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks, the problem started in the maintenance shed on the property. An aging waste oil storage tank developed a leak over the previous weekend, which resulted in oil flowing through the storm drain and contaminating “about a third of an acre of parkland.”
When maintenance personnel arrived at the shed on Monday morning and discovered the leak, McLeod said, they alerted city personnel.
“(The Maryland Department of the Environment), the Baltimore Fire Department and HAZ-MAT have been working with park staff to clean that area,” she noted. “They found no further contamination.”
The area affected by the oil spill, she noted, was confined to the land around the shed.
“It did not reach the boat lake or any other areas.”