The City of Lakewood called us out to clean up a hydraulic spill from one of their street sweepers.  The street sweeper had a leak in its hydraulic lines that the driver couldn’t see because of the water he used as he swept the streets.  Because he didn’t know the leak was there, he covered over 4500 linear feet of asphalt with four lines of hydraulic fluid.

Hydraulic Spill Cleanup For The City of Lakewood

Hydraulic Spill Cleanup For The City of Lakewood

The City of Lakewood attempted to clean up some areas and quickly realized that it was going to be a bigger job than their personnel could handle.  They had a material that was working fairly well on the stains, but was foaming up and making a bigger mess.  After a few attempts, the City workers also realized that if they tried to do any full-scale clean-up, they were going to have wash water running into storm drains – a big problem.  All these factors added up to the need for a professional pressure washing company that could recover all their wash water – so they called us!

Because the hydraulic fluid had a few weeks to set into the asphalt, our material and pressure washing only slightly faded the stains.  Asphalt is oil-based and if an oily material like hy

Hydraulic Spill Cleanup From a Leaking Street Sweeper

Hydraulic Spill Cleanup From a Leaking Street Sweeper

draulic fluid is spilled on the asphalt, they mix together – there is no economical cleaning material or process that can extract the oil-based liquid from the oil-based asphalt.  If we get to a spill like this right away, we can clean up a lot more of the spilled material before it soaks into the asphalt.  A stain will still be visible, but it will fade much more quickly than if the spilled material is allowed to sit and soak into the asphalt.

Wash On Wheels can respond to emergency hydraulic spills within 24 hours – usually the same day we receive the call.  We always follow EPA best management practices and Colorado state regulations for pressure washing, recovering our wash water and protecting storm sewers.  That’s why the government agencies call us for their pressure washing projects.

Click here to see whatother kinds of emergency spill cleanups we have done.

 

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