Nation : Threat From Fuel Spill Wanes

PITTSBURGH — Threats to water supplies created by a fuel spill in the Allegheny River waned as the slick snaked along the Ohio River toward Ohio and West Virginia.

“In our tests we’re seeing a marked dissipation in the amounts of fuel throughout the rivers,” said Betsy Mallison, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources.

The concentration of petroleum 5 feet deep in the Ohio River at West View dropped from 75 parts per billion at 1 p.m. to 25 parts per billion six hours later, Mallison said.

The spill, which stretched 14 miles through the river in industrial Beaver County early today, came from at least 75,000 gallons of diesel, gasoline and kerosene that seeped from a severed interstate pipeline into an Allegheny River tributary Friday after a mudslide near Freeport.