ATLANTIC CITY- Several different agencies joined forces Tuesday after an oil spill was located in Atlantic City. Officials say Mother Nature worked against them since it took most of the day and evening to complete this massive cleanup effort.

Around 11:30 this morning, Atlantic City fire officials were called to Texas and Atlantic Avenues for reports of an oil leak. Only problem was with the steady rain, they didn't know where it was coming from. "You could smell it...going in all different directions, storm drains were all backed up and it was rerouting stuff around the corner and it was spreading out."

Fire crews immediately got to work...closing down oil-slicked roadways and using all available resources to contain the spill before calling in an outside contractor to help. "It's a major operation…we depleted all our resources, we used up all our sand and all our absorbent materials."

It took officials several hours to pinpoint the location to an underground oil tank in the parking lot of MAB Paints.

The State Department of Environmental Protection says a snowplow knocked the cap off of the tank left over from when housing units once occupied the paint shops parking lot. Brooks said, "We're estimating a couple hundred gallons of fuel leaked out, probably because of water drainage, snow melting and water going into tank caused an overflow."

Despite their efforts, the oil made its way down to the bay, where the DEP says the fire department helped the Coast Guard set up what's known as a containment boom, to stop the oil from spreading further out in the water.

Although crews were able to quickly gain control of the situation, fire officials wish Mother Nature had worked with them instead of against them. "The weather compounded this…if we had gotten out here yesterday it might have been different scenario."

The DEP will continue to monitor the situation. Officials say this is a prime example of why gas tanks are no longer put underground because if it were above ground, it would have been easy to spot the leak and could have prevented a major cleanup like this from happening.