A tanker truck crashed into a creek on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula on Friday, spilling fuel into a tributary of a river where salmon runs were recently restored after a decades-long fight to remove its dams.
A spokesperson for Gov. Bob Ferguson’s office said the petroleum spill in Indian Creek was the result of an accident on U.S. 101. It was not immediately clear what caused it.
The truck is capable of holding 6,000 gallons of diesel and 4,000 gallons of gasoline, although the exact amount that had entered the river was not known, according to the governor’s office.
“The truck is actively leaking and crews are working to contain the spill,” the governor’s office statement Friday evening said.
Photos shared by the Washington State Department of Transportation on Facebook show the tanker truck upside down in the creek, while emergency vehicles surround the scene.
“This spill is nothing short of heartbreaking for local tribes and other Washingtonians who rely on clean, healthy rivers and streams for their food and livelihoods,” Ferguson said in a statement.
He said he is closely monitoring the situation, including its effect on salmon, and plans to visit within the next few days.
Two dams on the Elwha River, which flows out of Olympic National Park into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, were removed more than a decade ago after a long fought battle by the the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. Removing the dams, which were constructed in the early 1900s, opened about 70 miles (113 kilometers) of habitat for salmon and steelhead.
Biologists have said it will take at least a generation for the river to recover, but within months of the dams being taken down, salmon already started recolonizing sections of the waterway long closed off to them.
The Elwha River is also the main potable water source for Port Angeles. The city announced Friday afternoon that it was temporarily shutting down its water treatment processing operations and asked residents and businesses to limit their use of water.
“The City’s reservoirs currently have sufficient water supply for the next 18 to 24 hours without interruption to normal service,” the city’s statement said.
The spill and collision closed part of U.S. 101 on Friday, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation. It said it couldn’t give an estimate on when it would reopen.
“We expect this to be an extended closure,” the department wrote in a post on Facebook.
