ALGOMA TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — Michigan weather delayed the progress of the work happening along the northbound lanes of US-131 at 12 Mile after a fuel spill.

In the early morning hours of Jan. 24 a driver of a semitruck lost control and crashed, spilling around 5,000 gallons of fuel. One lane of northbound US-131 was closed until Friday, when the cleanup was completed.

“The whole thing started with not driving for conditions. It was icy out, the truck was going too fast. Jackknifed, rolled, the gas came out. It was a big ordeal. We’re lucky no one was hurt. Still amazing that thing didn’t explode when that tanker rolled over. It was a big mess but our guys did a great job cleaning it up,” said John Richard with the Michigan Department of Transportation. 

Since then crews have been working to clean up the site where the fuel spilled. 

“Luckily everything is restored, the erosion control is in place and they will be back in spring once the weather warms up to plant trees and throw down some seeds,” Richard said.  

Crews will be back in the spring to replant some trees that had to be taken down due to the crash.  

“They’ve done a lot of testing originally, so there was a lot of testing going to see just how widespread it was. So all the testing has been done and all the contaminated soil has been removed. It took them a long time, weather really did slow them down. But they did a really great, detailed job to get all those contaminated soils out of there. The Rogue River is not too far away from here. So they wanted to get it out as thoroughly as possible,” said Richard.