This bourbon distillery suffered a disaster last year. Now there’s been another spill.
Two people were injured and a stream was threatened by a leak at a distillery near Bardstown Tuesday.
Barton 1792 Distillery in Nelson County is the same facility where a warehouse collapsed last summer.
The incident Tuesday morning occurred when a tank failed, puncturing another tank and damaging a pipe on a third, WKYT-TV reported.
The station said a holding basin intended to catch leaks overflowed quickly, and the liquid traveled toward a nearby stream.
Emergency management officials told WKYT that employees at the distillery set up barriers to keep the liquid from flowing into the stream, and a contracted cleanup crew was brought in.
The Kentucky Standard reported that officials with the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection were on the scene.
The two people who were injured were taken to Flaget Memorial Hospital for treatment, WKYT reported. Their injuries were not life threatening.
One was a visitor and another was a tour guide, according to The Kentucky Standard.
The Courier-Journal reported that about 120,000 gallons of fluid was released in the incident.
The newspaper said one of the legs upholding a beer well, which contained fermented mash, failed, causing 55,000 gallons of mash to spill. The falling tank damaged other tanks, causing them to leak as well.
The distillery posted on its Facebook page, saying that its visitor center would be closed for the rest of the day Tuesday.
A warehouse at Barton 1792 partially collapsed last June, dropping 9,000 barrels of bourbon in a heap and sending runoff into a tributary of the Beech Fork River, causing fish to die. On July 4, the other half fell.
The distillery is owned by Sazerac.
