The cleanup and monitoring of a massive December fuel spill from two ruptured pipelines in Nemaha County will last at least two years, a state official said Thursday.

It will take about a year to clean up petroleum products at the site, which then will be monitored for a year, said Jim Bunstock, a spokesman for the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality.

The state agency has overseen cleanup efforts since a farmer -- operating a bulldozer to clear brush roots from a hedgerow -- hit the 8- and 12-inch pipelines buried in a farm field about two and a half miles south of Nemaha on Dec. 10.

An official with the Nebraska One-Call Center said the center got no call before the digging. Anyone who digs near buried pipeline, cable, etc., should call the center at 811 before excavating.

DEQ estimates that 2,834 barrels of gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel  spilled from the pipelines and contaminated soil and water in a nearby unnamed creek.

Magellan Midstream Partners, the owner of the pipelines, and its contractors have been recovering the spilled fuel using small dams, trenches, absorbent materials, sump pumps and a vacuum truck.

Bruce Heine, a spokesman for Magellan, headquartered in Tulsa, Okla., agreed the cleanup will take at least two years.

Heine said the company had no new information on the cost of the cleanup or potential litigation.

As of Jan. 11, workers had recovered 137 barrels of fuel, Bunstock said.

"They have quite a ways to go."

Workers won't recover the entire amount because of evaporation and oxidation, Bunstock said.

Samples analyzed so far show no contamination in Jarvis Creek or the Nemaha River, Bunstock said. The unnamed creek flows into Jarvis Creek.

"It's not in the groundwater," Bunstock said. "It's in the soil."

Magellan employees and contractors are monitoring and "intercepting" pollution at this time, he said, and will decide later if soil needs to be hauled away.

DEQ also is monitoring the water wells of two homes about a mile away, and no pollution has been detected, he said.

Whether the state agency will require permanent monitoring wells to be installed on the site has yet to be determined, Bunstock said.

DEQ did not have any figures on what cleanup has cost the agency so far, but it is tracking expenses, he said. A department inspector visits the site weekly.