Cleanup from a burst diesel pipeline just north of Aberdeen continues Wednesday.
One estimate puts the amount of spilled fuel at 15,000 gallons.
NuStar and a third-party response team were mobilized immediately after the spill took place early Tuesday morning.
NuStar's monitoring system alerted them of the spill and they shutdown the pipeline immediately.
Clean up from spilled pipeline is now underway.
The pipeline was originally built between NuStar's Aberdeen and Jamestown, North Dakota terminals in the 1960's.
"We have training sessions where we train on this annually and also we run an internal inspection toll through our pipeline every five years to look for defects," Director of Operations for NuStar's Central-East North System, Jim Johnson said.
But now that training is being put into practice.
A small section of pipe was the culprit of the spill.
"We're just trying to clean the ditch out so we can put the new piece of pipe back in," Johnson said.
Johnson says the affected area of the spill is less than a half an acre.
Hazmat crews have been laying down straw and using vacuum trucks to pick up the spilled fuel.
Excavators spent Wednesday digging up the fuel-soaked dirt.
All day dump trucks have been taking loads of the contaminated dirt to a permitted dumping zone in the Brown County Landfill.
"Our original estimate which was rather conservative was a maximum of 500 barrels, we've picked up about 350 barrels so far, that is also water as well," Johnson said.
The dump trucks take the contaminated soil to the Brown County Landfill.
According to Brown County Landfill Manager Mike Scott, the landfill has a two foot layer of clay that helps to avoid causing any further contamination.
"The material in a spot where it's not gonna affect ground water or contaminate any other facility or soil," Scott said.
Johnson says an investigation into the cause of the spill is still ongoing and cleanup could take up to ten days.
