More Details About Sunday’s Tanker Spill on Bluff

The tanker that flipped and spilled oil-based drilling mud on the bluff Sunday was bad – but it could have been a whole lot worse. In DPS trooper Louis Gabler’s incident report of the accident, he states that the driver of the truck “made a valiant effort to avoid hitting other vehicles” on the road when the left front tire of the 18-wheeler had a blow-out as the truck was coming down the bluff about 2:25 p.m. Sunday The driver of that truck was Andrew Lee Lackey, 44 of Gonzales, who was driving for AJ’s Logistics Service LLC of Alice/ Kenedy, Texas. The truck did not hit any other vehicles, and no citation was issued. Lackey was uninjured in the wreck, but about 1,000 gallons of the drilling mud leaked from the tanker he was hauling after it flipped on its side.

The mud spread across the roadway, and down the side of the Bluff about 30 feet into a dry creek bed on the Tiemann property, said La Grange Fire Chief Frank Menefee, who responded to the scene along with seven firefighters and three trucks. A small fire was sparked by the crash in the dry vegetation adjacent to the roadway but Menefee said the fire had burned itself out by the time fire fighters arrived. Menefee said Dr. Tiemann’s son used some of the family’s heavy equipment to create a dam that stopped the leaking mud from spreading further across the property.

Fayette County Emergency Management Coordinator Craig Moreau said the quick action of those on the scene helped minimize damage to a larger area. Moreau said a Hazardous Material Team from Hays County was contacted as well as a private clean-up company and the Lower Colorado River Authority. The river is adjacent to the Tiemann property, but none of the mud leaked as far as the river.

Moreau said the clean-up of the site included a vacuum truck to suck any excess oil-based mud and then the removal of any dirt that had come into contact with the mud. This type of oilbased mud is used in the drilling process of oil wells. Moreau said the material was not highly toxic but did contain hydrocarbons, so the spill did have to be taken very seriously.

The responsibility, financial and otherwise, for all aspects of the clean-up and aftermath of the spill falls back into the trucking company, Menefee said, and he has been in contact with them since the accident and they were taking all the proper steps, including contacting the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, which had representatives visiting the site Monday.