Politics & Government

After the Spill: Q&A with Village Manager

Patch talks on Tuesday night with Rob Bahan about the heating oil spill.

Reports of a suspcious smell near Elder Lane Beach on Tuesday morning led to a whirlwind day for the Village of Winnetka.

Rob Bahan, village manager, said a heating oil spill was detected, as the substance was filtering into Lake Michigan through a storm water sewer pipeline.

Read more: Patch coverage of the fuel oil spill.

Find out what's happening in Winnetka-Glencoewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Patch sat down with Bahan on Tuesday night to find out how the story developed.

Patch: So how did it all start?
Bahan: Once the park district reported the smell at Elder Lane Beach, our fire department and public works [department] were both called to the scene. At that point, once there's a visual observation and you can certainly smell it, the IEPA [Illinois Environmental Protection Agency] was called and we started to make contact with environmental remediation companies who specialize [in oil clean-ups].

Find out what's happening in Winnetka-Glencoewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Patch: What plan of action did you take once the oil spill was confirmed?
Bahan: Through the course of the day, we had simulataneous action going on: Stop any further discharge, and work from the discharge point [into the lake] back to identify the cause of the spill.

Patch: So what was the cause of the spill?
Bahan: What happened was a contractor was working on a private property, and they hit a tank underground, which started to leak. We don't know how much leaked. It could have started late yesterday [Monday] or early this morning [Tuesday].

Patch: What's the clean-up process from here?
Bahan: We're in the process of getting rid of the fuel oil in the tank, cleaning up the spill at the lakefront and cleaning the storm sewer.

Patch: And who pays for all the clean-up?
Bahan: We have an ordinance in Winnetka that the polluting party pays. The contractor, or whoever is responsible, will have discussions with their insurance company to pay remediation. We feel pretty confident that this was the source of the contamination.

Patch: How big of a deal is this fuel oil spill in the grand scheme of Winnetka news?
Bahan: I don't know. We don't do this every day.

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