The clean-up of a diesel spill north of Pendleton just got more complicated with the entrance of a new player — Pendleton Sanitary Service.

The company is claiming the right to haul away asbestos and other construction debris from a home at the spill site that needs to come down. Mike McHenry, owner of the company, this week informed the Department of Environmental Quality that his company owns the franchise for hauling away demolition debris in this part of Umatilla County and has the sole right to haul away a ranch house on the property.

The recent development has one of the property owners, Fritz Hill, feeling frustrated. Hill, of Hill Ranches, knows that the house will likely come down soon, a victim of diesel contamination. He’s made his peace with that and also with a DEQ plan to contain asbestos inside the house during demolition. Environmental workers would get the house wet, demolish it, load it, cover it with moist soil and transport the debris to the Finley Buttes Landfill near Boardman for burial. The plan would have taken about two days.

Now, with the arrival of Pendleton Sanitary Service, the demolition will take longer, he said. Those extra days, Hill said, are days during which spilled fuel would continue to travel underground. The diesel, he said, could do more damage than any chance of asbestos escaping into the air.

“The water issue trumps everything else,” he said.

DEQ’s Mike Renz, who heads the clean-up, explained that the process will take longer because it must be done in two chunks instead of one.

The plan is to eradicate the asbestos separately, which means more surgical removal of a layer of vinyl flooring, roofing material and textured sheet rock by workers wearing Tyvek suits and respirators. The rubble — bagged, tied-up and taped — will go into 20-cubic-yard plastic-lined containers. After two-and-a-half days or so of asbestos abatement, Pendleton Sanitary Service trucks would haul the debris to Finley Buttes.

With the asbestos gone, an excavator would crunch the rest of the house into the basement. The debris would be loaded for hauling to the PSS Transfer Station.

This two-step process would delay the project, Renz said. During that time, he acknowledged, the diesel could spread.

McHenry did not want to comment, noting the process and regulations are complex. He confirmed that his company holds the franchise to haul away demolition and construction debris in Umatilla County on acreage directly surrounding Pendleton.

At the moment, Renz and three environmental recovery companies cleaning up the spill are stuck in a corner, waiting for attorneys to discuss terms of an agreement between Hill Ranches and Maverik, the company that owns the pup trailer full of 5,000 pounds of diesel that tumbled March 1 off Highway 37.

Hill said demolition of the 1905 farmhouse is almost a certainty.

“The suits are working that out,” he said.

While the negotiations continue, most of the machinery at the site 1.5 miles north of Pendleton sits idle. However, Renz said, an important activity continues — the decommissioning of two wells near the home. A drill rig belonging to Zollman’s Larry Burd Well Drilling was just setting up as Renz spoke Wednesday morning. The drilling company will stuff both wells with cement slurry to safeguard the water supply.

“These are direct conduits to the regional aquifer,” Renz said.

He said the oldest well, drilled in 1905, goes down about 550 feet. About 220 feet down is the old drill bit stuck crosswise, lost during a drilling operation in the 1970s. The plan is to grab the bit with a specialized tool or dislodge it and drop it to the bottom of the well. The well work could continue into the weekend.

Nearby, the home is ready for asbestos abatement.

The former residents, an employee and his family, moved to a Pendleton rental shortly after the spill. The farmhouse is empty and ready for its journey to oblivion.

Contact Kathy Aney at kaney@eastoregonian.com or call 541-966-0810.

This story originally appeared in East Oregonian.