MPR’s Greg Barron interviews Edwin Caffrey, director of public affairs at Metropolitan Airports Commission, about the Minnesota Airport Commission vote to request the federal aviation administration to grant the variants to the annual amount of money made available to the MAC for airport purposes.
This variance would allow for a device to skim off accidental spillage. During a breakage in an underground line, jet fuel surfaces and winds up in the Mississippi River. This device would prevent that.
SPEAKER: The commission voted to request the Federal Aviation Administration to grant a variance to the annual amounts of money made available to the MEC for airport purposes. The variance would allow the commission to construct at the major storm sewer running from the airport into the Minnesota River.
A device which would skim off any kind of an accidental fuel spillage, and to divert that fuel into a holding area until such time as other arrangements could be made to remove it. This way, the accidental spillage would not get into the river as it happened one time, maybe a year ago.
SPEAKER 1: I'm not exactly sure what all the details are, but it was in the spring of the year. And there was some kind of a breakage in an underground line in a couple of 100,000 gallons of jet fuel found its way above the surface and mixed in with the melting snow was discovered.
And it actually wound up in the Minnesota River then into the Mississippi River. The device which is being suggested now by hydrological engineers would prevent that, whether the spill be known or an unknown spill.