should be at the recently privatized Wirth Park.
Attached are photos of what appear to be several gallons of hydraulic fluid
sprayed around the park. I'm under the impression that the fluid was washed
away by recent rains, and that no effort was made to clean up this particular
spill. It's important to know that while leaks happen with equipment, how the
operator responds makes the difference between something manageable and
something that triggers a notification to the Minnesota Pollution Control
Agency. We also need to know that the organization operating this type of
equipment knows what it's doing and has the capacity to deal with incidents.
I do not know further details of this event - it happened under the direction
of an outside group that isn't particularly accountable to the public. But the
park is a public asset, and Basset Creek already has enough problems.
A trained operator would have been paying attention and stopped immediately. A
trained operator would have fixed the problem out in the field rather than
attempting to operate broken equipment negligently. The organization running
the park ought to have the capacity to deal with the issues and effect a
cleanup.
It doesn't look like any of that happened.