By Erin Snodgrass

The Olympian

The state Department of Ecology estimates the Capitol Lake cleanup will cost $5 million, following an oil spill at the former Olympia Brewing Co. property in Tumwater earlier this year.

But Response Manager Dave Byers said that will most likely not be the final cost.

“We have been doing assessments of the extent of contamination as we have been cleaning up, so that number will likely change, either up or down,” Byers said.

The estimate includes the state’s cost from when they assumed the financial lead on the project in May, after the owner of the Tumwater Development LLC indicated he no longer had the means to contribute. The $5 million does not include his contributions, and Byers did not know how much the owner had already paid.

Vandals damaged a transformer on brewery property near Boston Street Southwest back in February. As much as 600 gallons of mineral oil spilled. The oil ran out of a transformer, into a storm drain system that carried the contaminants into the Deschutes River and Capitol Lake.

The Department of Ecology was notified of the spill on Feb. 25, but Byers said the state does not know if that’s the day the spill actually happened.

The cleanup team is working seven days a week and taking no holidays because there is evidence that the contamination is spreading out into the lake.

“The sooner we remove the contaminated sediments, the less time it’s going to take and the cheaper it’s going to be for us to clean up the damage caused by the transformer oil spill,” Byers told The Olympian.

The crew has removed about three-and-a-half miles of oiled vegetation and oil off the water’s surface. The remaining contamination is sub-surface and workers are using a system that separates water from contaminated sediment through a series of filters.

There is no estimate of when the process will be done.

“We are going to be here until we have met the state cleanup standards,” Byers said.