LEWISBURG — Unlike a lot of people in downtown Lewisburg, Aggie Spence was open for business on Monday. But as of Monday afternoon, she said, she hadn’t had a single customer.

“Everybody’s worried about getting water,” said Spence, owner of Aggie’s Something Sweet, Something Country. “It has killed the business.”

Schools, hotels and restaurants and other businesses were closed in Lewisburg and the surrounding area Monday, after a diesel spill contaminated a creek that feeds the water supply in the Lewisburg area over the weekend.

A tanker spilled nearly 4,000 gallons of diesel fuel into a tributary of the Greenbrier River on Friday night, causing the city of Lewisburg to shut down the intake to its water treatment plant.

Customers of the department, which provides water to about 12,000 people in Lewisburg and in surrounding areas from Renick to Ronceverte, were asked to conserve water over the weekend, but the system ran out of clean water at about 3 p.m. Sunday.

Paula Brown, deputy director for Greenbrier County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said the intakes from the Greenbrier River were turned back on at about 7 p.m. Monday after testing showed “no detectable levels” of diesel.

Al Whitaker, Greenbrier emergency services director, said the state Bureau for Public Health gave the go-ahead for the city to turn the water intake pumps back on. He said residents could start seeing their water service restored as early as this morning, depending on the elevation of the home.

Residents are under a boil-water advisory for three days after their water is restored, but not because of any worry about diesel fuel in the water, he said. He said it’s “standard protocol” to have a boil-water advisory after a water treatment plant is shut down.

Brown said it could take a few days for water to be restored for some customers, because water lines still needed to be re-pressurized.

“Depending on what elevation they’re at, it will take three days or so to make sure there’s pressure throughout the whole line,” she said. “It could take anywhere from one to three days to have water.”

City officials said the Lewisburg water plant itself was not contaminated, as its intakes were shut down about 10 hours before the diesel spill reached the intake to the plant.

Water distribution centers were set up Monday at the State Fair grounds in Fairlea and Island Park in Ronceverte. They would reopen at 7 a.m. today, emergency officials said, but the tanker at the State Fair grounds will be moved to the National Guard facility near the Lewisburg airport. Residents were told to bring their own containers for filling.

Lewisburg residents Charles and L.J. Fauber were walking along the Greenbrier River Trail Monday afternoon, as they do every day. The couple said they were fairly prepared — they had bottled water and a few extra gallons for emergencies — but were worried about businesses potentially affected by the spill.

“I feel sorry for local businesses, people that maybe work at a fast-food place that won’t get paid,” L.J. Fauber said.

Roger Dolan, owner of The Wild Bean, in Lewisburg, said the restaurant and coffee shop turned away customers all day Monday.

Of the potential for negative financial impact, Dolan said, “If we open back up [Tuesday], maybe not.

“We’re going to be closed for a couple days because we need very clean water to make coffee with.”

Dolan has about 10 employees who are out of work too, he said. He said there’s not much he can do to make up the income they’re not earning.

“I just feel bad for them. That’s all I can do,” Dolan said.

The Greenbrier County Health Department ordered all food establishments closed Sunday, although they could reopen if they develop alternate water plans, Paula Brown of the county’s emergency management department said Sunday. On Monday, emergency officials said they told hotels to close, as well.

The truck, from Elkins-based Woodford Transport, was hauling about 7,500 gallons of diesel fuel from Roanoke, Virginia, to Elkins when it wrecked on Friday night along W.Va. Route 92 about 12 miles north of White Sulphur Springs, according to Kelley Gillenwater, spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Emergency officials said Monday that the truck’s cab and tank separated, causing the tanker to crash and spill.

Gillenwater said about 4,000 gallons spilled but that it wasn’t clear how much of it went into the soil and how much went into the water.

There was a drainage ditch at the wreck site that runs into Anthony Creek, a tributary of the Greenbrier River, Gillenwater said.

An official from Woodford Transport did not return a phone message Monday. The ditch where the spill originally happened has been diverted from Anthony Creek, officials said at Monday’s briefing.

Dolan said he thinks the city has been handling the spill well, but he was worried about the environmental impact.

“[Anthony Creek] is one of the most — it’s kind of one of the jewels of West Virginia,” he said.

That, too, could be bad for Lewisburg businesses.

“I’m concerned people won’t think the water’s fit to drink even when we open back up,” Dolan said.

Bret Preston, chief of the warm-water fisheries section of the state Division of Natural Resources, said there appeared to have been no fish kills as a result of the fuel spill as of Sunday. Preston’s staff was on the scene Monday to further assess the impact of the spill, but no dead fish had been reported, according to DNR spokesman Hoy Murphy.

Anthony Creek, a stream popular with trout fishermen, flows through the Monongahela National Forest and its Blue Bend Recreation Area before entering the Greenbrier River north of Lewisburg. The creek forms the northern boundary of the Big Draft Wilderness Area.

The reported location of the diesel spill appeared to be outside the “zone of critical concern” for potential contamination of Lewisburg’s Greenbrier River drinking water supply, according to an assessment conducted by the state Bureau for Public Health in 2003.

A map included in that report shows the zone of critical concern for Lewisburg’s water system extends north to where Anthony Creek enters the Greenbrier, but not farther east to the site of the diesel fuel spill along W.Va. 92.

Under the law passed following last year’s Freedom Industries chemical leak in the Kanawha Valley, water utilities in West Virginia are required to write new source-water protection plans that focus on contamination sources within their critical zones. Those zones are determined by formulas that take into account water travel time and other factors, and are meant to represent the area of an intake’s greatest susceptibility to potential contamination.

Evan Hansen, an environmental consultant with Downstream Strategies, said the situation this week in Lewisburg illustrates why water utilities should not stop at the edge of the critical concern zone — and why lawmakers should be cautious in narrowing how last year’s water protection law is applied.

“It shows the importance of looking outside of the zone of critical concern for potential significant contaminant sources,” Hansen said Monday. “That zone is the first place to look, but each utility needs to consider whether there are threats farther from the intake that also need to be addressed.”

While much of the focus from SB 373 has been on stationary above-ground chemical storage tanks, Hansen noted that the Lewisburg incident is a reminder that transportation of hazardous materials also can be a threat to drinking water supplies.

“It also shows how important it is to include transportation accidents in the planning process,” Hansen said. “Across the state, there are a lot of road crossings, trains that run alongside rivers, and barges in the rivers — all of which present potential threats of contamination.”

Jim Callison’s house and farm sits next to the spill site. He uses well water and is still using it. The EPA has been testing the well water and found it, as of Monday afternoon, not to be contaminated.

The 320-acre farm has been in Callison’s family since 1947. He uses the water there to water his horse and chickens. Most of the land is leased to an organic corn growing operation, he said.

Callison said the spill “is something that happened.”

“We gotta live with it,” he said.

Staff writers Ken Ward Jr., Erin Beck and Rick Steelhammer contributed to this report.

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