Hole Found In Barrier Wall Of Con Ed Substation That Was Source Of 37,000 Gallon Oil Leak

VINEGAR HILL, BROOKLYN — A dye test performed Thursday morning revealed structural deficiencies in the barrier wall of a Brooklyn Con Edison substation that was the source of a 31,000 gallon oil leak in May, a Con Ed spokesman told Patch.

A dive team discovered a small hole in the barrier wall of the Farragut Substation, located in Vinegar Hill on the East River shoreline, which could have allowed gallons of dielectric oil to seep into the river after being dumped onto nearby soil, a Con Ed spokesman told Patch. The hole must be repaired, which could take weeks, the spokesman told Patch.

Con Ed crews used non-toxic dye to trace the path the oil took from soil near the substation — where the 31,000 gallons of dielectric fluid was originally spilled — to the East River. None of the dye ended up on the river's surface Thursday but some was found below the surface near the substation's barrier wall, a Con Ed spokesman said. Divers were able to locate a hole in the wall by studying the dye beneath the water's surface, the spokesman said.

The utility company will now bring in a repair crew to determine the scope of the repairs for the barrier wall and fix the hole, the Con Ed spokesman told Patch. The spokesman could not confirm how many gallons of dielectric fluid could have seeped into the East River from the hole, but did say that approximately 560 gallons were initially recovered from the river.

On Sunday, May 7, about 31,000 gallons of dielectric oil spewed from a transformer at the Farragut Substation into soil near the station, a spokeswoman from the U.S. Coast Guard told Patch at the time. The transformer contained a total of 37,000 gallons of oil but about 6,000 remained in the transformer after the "catastrophic failure" the spokeswoman told Patch in May.

By the next night, the hazardous fluid had spread far enough into the river that the Coast Guard declared a "safety zone" stretching from the waters off Greenpoint (Dupont Street) and Midtown (East 25th Street) down to Red Hook (south end of the Buttermilk Channel).

The general public didn't find out about the spill until two days after it happened. And even then, they only found out thanks to a tweet from the East River Ferry.

After Con Ed crews fix the hold in the barrier wall they will need to perform a follow up dye test to make sure there are no further structural deficiencies.

Photo courtesy of @kroesserstrat/Twitter