TRENTON (MERCER) – Trenton Fire Department responded to the area 730 Pennington Ave near Melon Street for a hazardous materials assignment inside the water treatment plant on Friday May 30, 2008. Firefighters on the department's hazardous materials team made entry and found Sodium Hypochlorite and contained the spill.

 

 

Story: Trenton Times, http://www.nj.com

 

 

TRENTON – Parts of Pennington Avenue and surrounding streets were temporarily closed and members of the fire department’s hazardous materials team called out after a chemical spill was discovered inside a pump house at the city reservoir Friday afternoon, May 30, 2008
The fire department was alerted about 3:30 p.m. after employees of the city’s water utility discovered liquid spilled on the ground on both sides of a “containment wall” located inside the building off Pennington Avenue near Mellon Street, Trenton Fire Battalion Chief Graham Smith said.
Firefighters with the HazMat team donned protective suits, entered the building, and tested the liquid to determine exactly what it was, Smith said. He said the liquid on the outside of the containment wall was determined to be water, while the liquid on the inside of the containment wall was found to be sodium hypoclorite, a bleach used to treat bacteria in the water of the reservoir.
A leak in a tank that holds the chemical was apparently the cause of the spill, Smith said, noting that the containment wall served the purpose for which it was built by confining the spill to one area. After being notified of the situation by firefighters, state Department of Environmental Protection officials authorized water utility workers to pump the chemical back into the another holding tank, Smith said.
The closed roads were reopened around 5 p.m.