In the midst of dealing with the flood situation, emergency service workers were called out to an oil spill in Maldon last Friday. A significant quantity of waste oil had leaked out from a sump at a Victorian Goldfields Railway workshop and into a neighbouring property.
If the spill had not been attended to, the oil would have eventually found its way under Hornsby Street and into the parkland on the other side of the road.
The EPA was in attendance to instruct on appropriate clean-up from the discharge point and Mt Alexander Shire outdoor staff arrived promptly with sand to contain the spill.
Maldon Fire Brigade Captain Sean McCubbin said, “I have nothing but praise for the awesome response of the Shire staff who have been smashed with a huge amount of work during the floods. But they found time to help us out.”
Property owner Kate Gamble was not happy about the black slurry that began flowing through her property from the VGR sump.
When the Times spoke to her, local contractor Steve Lang was removing the affected soil, which then had to be trucked to a facility near Sunbury.
“It was a significant amount of oil,” she said. “The CFA blasted a tanker full of water through my stone gutter and sandbagged the spill as a temporary measure.”
This article appeared in the Tarrangower Times, 21 October 2022.
