Thousands of gallons of oil leaked at a Waterbury manufacturing company on Saturday, officials said.
Crews responded to the Somers Thin Strip Company on Piedmont Street sometime around 3 p.m. after a valve failed and released approximately 4,000 gallons of hydraulic oil onto the property, pavement, soil and a catch basin.
Booms have been placed in several locations throughout the river and the main ones are in Beacon Falls and Seymour.
Crews had to return to the scene after reports of an oil sheen on the Naugatuck River, DEEP Emergency Response Unit Supervisor Jeff Chandler said.
"There will be a large portion of the oil that has already moved downstream that we’re not going to be able to collect once it gets to the point where it’s too thin on the surface of the river. We consider it not recoverable, unfortunately," Chandler said.
“We take this situation extremely seriously. Our team has been working tirelessly to address and remediate the oil leakage as well as cooperate with and assist local authorities and environmental agencies,” Dale Taylor, president of GBC Metals, LLC, said in a statement.
GBC, or Global Brass and Copper, owns Olin Brass and Somers Thin Strip is one of the companies divisions.
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Waterbury Fire Department were called to the scene to place booms in the water near the pipe to absorb the oil.
"It’s quite a bit of product. It is a light oil, which is good news, it stays on top of the water," Waterbury Fire Chief David Martin said.
Martin advises people to avoid the river for at least a week.
"I don’t expect this time of year there’s a lot of water activity. People, maybe, fish. I would avoid that at least for the time being, the next week or so," Martin said.
Environmental professionals are surveying any ecological damage.
The city notified communities downstream what had happened.
No other information was made immediately available.
