Crews under contract with the Maryland Department of the Environment still were cleaning up olive oil from the Baltimore Harbor nearly a week after 5,000 gallons spilled from a nearby plant.
The oil flowed from the Pompeian Inc. plant on Pulaski Highway after vandals broke into a 20-foot holding tank sometime between Friday evening and Saturday morning, officials said.
Attempts to flush the oil from the two miles of storm drains between the plant and harbor weren’t successful, said Alan Williams, MDE director of emergency operations.
About 200,000 gallons of water from fire hydrants didn’t help much, but the rain late in the week did, he said.
Cleanup crews had recovered about 2,200 gallons of the oil by Friday, and were still poised to collect any more that trickled from the drains, he said.
There was one casualty in the spill. Williams rescued from the water a small duck covered in oil, which damaged the duck’s ability to insulate.
However, the duck died about a day later. Officials at Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research in Delaware will conduct an autopsy to determine if Williams or rescuers might have contributed to its death.
The information then can help wildlife rescuers improve their procedures, Williams said.
“We don’t put out that kind of effort and lose the guys,” he said.
