Written by Weighing 80 tons and measuring 140′ in length and 7′ in diameter, the Baker Wood Preserving Company installed two of these mammoth tubes at its factory located at the northwest corner of Kenton Avenue (aka State Route 309) and Holland Road in January 1937.
Each tube would be loaded with 800 untreated wooden railroad ties, sealed up, and then flooded with 20,000 gallons of creosote oil.
After soaking in the creosote oil under pressure for a period of five to seven hours, the creosote oil would then be drained and the treated railroad ties removed. The ties would then be placed in an open-air lot to the west of the factory, where they would cure for a period of one year.
What we now know is that when the company drained these tanks, it dumped the carcinogenic oil into a storm water drain that carried it a half a mile west into the Rock Swell Ditch, which then traveled an additional half mile where it landed in the Little Scioto River, near the intersection of State Route 95.
By 1954, farmers living downstream from State Route 95 began complaining of river pollution. One farmer sued both Baker Wood Preserving and the city of Marion for $15,000 in damages, as he claimed that the pollution had ruined his land and caused the deaths of 85 hogs over a period of three years.
Two years later, Marion County’s game warden, James Thatcher, announced that there wasn’t a single living creature alive in that stretch of the Little Scioto.
Baker Wood Preserving Company ceased operations in the 1960s and their former lot sat vacant for many years, without much in the way of environmental attention.
Presumably, however, the company dumped a ridiculous amount of toxic creosote oil into the Little Scioto between 1937 and 1954. If they treated 450,000 ties in a year, as is documented, and they treated 800 ties with 20,000 gallons of creosote oil, that means that they dumped up to 11.25 million gallons of creosote oil into the Little Scioto per year. If it continued from 1937 to 1954–and by all accounts it did–that’s an estimated 191.25 million gallons over a 17-year period.
It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that environmental researchers and, in 1991, that the Ohio EPA began looking into the site.
Researchers noted that the water in the Little Scioto killed all but the heartiest of species within 48 hours.
Linking contamination at the site to the environmental death of the Little Scioto, in 1999, a major cleanup project by the Ohio EPA took place and 3,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil was hauled away.
Unfortunately, the cleanup at the site could only do so much. Not to mention that much of the contamination had long made its way into the Little Scioto and the underground aquifer.
The Little Scioto River is currently undergoing a major cleanup project, which won’t be completed until 2028.