Unalaska, AK – More than 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel and contaminated water have already been collected from the oil spill site in Adak. Two clean-up crews are working to recover the 142,800 gallons of diesel that spilled from a storage tank as it was being filled at Adak Petroleum on Monday. Most of the fuel was absorbed into the land.

Unified Command spokesperson Sara Francis said the clean-up crews are focusing on cleaning the water first. They've already removed most of the fuel that entered the small boat harbor. The weather is also working in their favor. Rain is flushing the oil toward collection points and the waves are making it easier to clean up.

"The diesel fuel that we are seeing has already emulsified and turned into kind of like a yellow cool-whip sitting around the edges of the booms where it's getting some wave action," Francis said. "It turns it into a kind of a mousse as it emulsifies."

Clean-up crews are using vacuum trucks and skimmers to collect the fuel. "A skimmer is essentially a vacuum that you can put in the water," Francis explained. "There are a variety of different kinds. There are a variety of different heads and attachments that you can put on them, just like a vacuum cleaner, that allow you to clean up different types of oil in different environments."

In areas where the fuel was reduced to a light sheen, it was too thin to suck up, but diesel dissipates quickly. A team headed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is focusing on the oiled shoreline and the soil that absorbed fuel to develop a remediation plan.

Cleaning up "the soil will probably be a more lengthy process," Francis said. "In previous cases, such as the Selendang Ayu, the soil actually had to be dug up in parts and either turned over so the natural ocean waves could help clean and break it up or removed completely."

The Department of Environmental Conservation's Young Ha said that soil has to be removed because fuel in the ground can cause problems for drinking water.

"If it's in the ground, usually our main concern is impact to the groundwater because that's what may get used as potential drinking water for people in the future. And also, being underground, because its not interacting with what might naturally degrade it to its simplest form, it can linger on a lot longer within the ground."

They are still developing a specific plan to deal with the spill in Adak. Weather conditions, the terrain of the spill area, and the number of daylight hours limits the clean-up speed.

Number two diesel currently sells in Adak for $3.49 per gallon. If estimates for the amount spilled are correct, Adak Petroleum could have lost almost a half a million dollars in fuel sales.