During the summer of 2019, a lightning strike at the Jim Beam warehouses resulted in a fire that destroyed nearly 45,000 barrels, containing 2.5 million gallons of bourbon that flowed into a nearby creek flowing to the Kentucky River. The Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection, in coordination with other state and federal agencies, quickly responded to the disaster using a combination of water sampling and water field screening instruments to get real-time results of water quality to determine the location of the 23-mile alcohol plume on a daily basis.
To read about this and the other measures taken, check out the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet’s blog post.
