Mayor To Shut Most of TX City's Fuel Stations

October 3, 2010 - Mayor Annise Parker plans to shut down two-thirds of the city's 99 fueling stations, a cost-cutting measure intended to reduce the city's potential liability for leaking contaminants.

While the closures will save the city in the long run, the process of removing underground fuel storage tanks can be expensive. The price skyrockets if underground tanks are found to be leaking fuel or oil, requiring expensive remediation to dispose of contaminated soil to safeguard surrounding neighborhoods. In some cases, monitoring wells have to be drilled to make sure the leaking fuel products have not contaminated the groundwater under the sites.

In the last three years, the city has paid private contractors $5.8 million to replace underground storage tanks at city fire and police stations, public works facilities and parks. A number of the sites where tanks had leaked had to undergo extensive soil removal and other remediation efforts, according to records obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

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LA Environmental School Site in Toxic Soil Cleanup

September 12, 2010 - Students at a new green themed school named for noted conservationists Rachel Carson and Al Gore don't have to go far for a lesson in environmental contamination: Their $75 million campus was laden with toxic soil.

Los Angeles Unified district officials have spent $4 million to clean up the site of the new Carson-Gore Academy of Environmental Studies, which is set to open Monday.

The three-acre site, located in a low-income neighborhood west of downtown LA, was contaminated with carcinogenic solvents that leaked from 17 underground storage tanks discovered during construction. The land had been previously used by light industrial businesses.

The school district said the school has been cleared by state toxic control authorities and is ready to receive its 675 elementary students, whose curriculum will be sprinkled with environmental themes.

But a coalition of environmental groups argues the district is not going far enough to prevent possible soil vapor intrusion into classrooms from an outside source of contamination. The site is bordered by a gas station and an oil well.

Testing at the site indicated that contamination was coming from a source other than the storage tanks onsite, said Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics, who has been monitoring the issue. That pollution could affect the groundwater, which could send vapors into the building.

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Old or Abandoned Wells Are Key Sources of TX Water Contamination

September 5, 2010 - New oil and gas drilling is probably the most visible activity people associate with threats to groundwater in Texas. But it's not usually the source of known contamination, according to state records.

Instead, old or abandoned oil and gas wells, petroleum storage facilities and even existing water wells are most frequently identified as problems.

A Texas Groundwater Protection Committee report, presented to the Legislature last year, said there were 4,729 active groundwater contamination cases documented or under enforcement in 2008.

Of those, 395, or 8.4 percent, were "attributed to oil and gas exploration and production activities," but "no producing oil and gas wells" were listed as groundwater-contamination sources, Texas Railroad Commission spokeswoman Ramona Nye said. The state has more than 281,000 oil and gas wells, Nye said.

Most contamination attributed to oil and gas exploration and production activities resulted from releases from sources such as pipelines and storage tanks, she said.

Cary Betz, chairman of the groundwater protection committee and a groundwater specialist with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said the biggest source of groundwater contamination is leaking underground gasoline storage tanks at old service stations. But the number of those tanks has dropped significantly, to 1,214 in 2009, he said.

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VA Family's Water Contaminated by Leaking Gas Station Tanks

February 23, 2010- A leaking underground storage tank on the premises of an old, defunct gas station in Keswick, Virginia, demonstrates how destructive a seemingly innocuous fuel tank leak can be. A report by Charlottesville News & Arts tells the story of David and Holli Traud, who bought a brand-new home just east of Charlottesville last year. However, when they moved in, they noticed that the tap water in their new home had a strange smell and bad taste.

At first the Trauds assumed the water’s bad odor and taste came from being unused, so they gave it the benefit of the doubt and waited a couple of weeks. To their surprise, the problem only grew worse.

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Polluted Lots Delay Seattle Housing Projects

December 2, 2009 - The barren lot of land marking the corner of 12th Avenue and East Jefferson Street might be an eyesore from above ground, but underground it’s even uglier.

Through research and testing, the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle found the lot to be contaminated with 400 times the state cleanup standards for petroleum. Capitol Hill Housing, which had planned to build an affordable housing facility on the site, now must wait for the city of Seattle to handle the clean up, which might cost more than $1 million.

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Elmont, NY Gas Station Owner Charged With Ignoring Leak

October 30, 2009- The owner of an Elmont gas station is accused of environmental crimes for allegedly ignoring orders from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to repair a damaged underground tank found to be leaking petroleum into the soil and groundwater.

Nejdet Yetim, 45, of Patchogue, the owner of the Liberty gas station on Hempstead Turnpike, was arrested Thursday morning and charged with endangering public health, safety or the environment and knowingly violating a final administrative order.

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Leaking Fuel Contaminates Chicago Neighborhood

October 27, 2009 - Fuel that leaked out of storage tanks and into the land of neighboring homes has some local residents outraged. They say no one is going to want to buy their homes now. They are worried about their investment and worried about their health.

Sometime before August 2001, for an unknown period of time, an unknown amount of oil loaded with toxic chemicals seeped from tanks and headed across the alley into yards, killing gardens and trees and causing an odor.

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EPA Earmarks $7.1 Million to Clean Up Petroleum Leaks in Michigan

August 31, 2009- EPA announced the distribution of $7.1 million to Michigan under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to assess and clean up underground storage tank petroleum leaks. The agency said the move is an effort to protect people where they live, work, and play, because the greatest potential hazard from a leaking underground storage tank is that the petroleum or other hazardous substances might seep into the soil and contaminate groundwater, the source of drinking water for nearly one-third of all Americans.

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Petroleum Leak Contaminated Drinking Water in Tennessee Community

June 16, 2009 - The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) is investigating whether underground storage tanks are leaking petroleum into this community’s supply. A complaint from a resident has prompted the investigation. Resident Karen Fortner said that since a June 14 water main break her tap water smells of gasoline.

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Gas Station Neighbors Fighting for Justice in PA.

April 17, 2009- After 10 years in legal limbo, a group of Whitpain plaintiffs fighting for justice against those responsible for a 1998 gas leak in their neighborhood are taking their plight to the streets.

Fisher said that in 1996, the owner of a Gulf gas station at Penllyn and Skippack pikes installed new double lumen underground storage tanks and a leak detection system that was not compatible with that storage system.

Although the amount of gasoline that had leaked was estimated to have been 12,000 gallons at the time, Fisher said based on her own calculations, she believes the number was more like 50,000 gallons.

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Maryland receives EPA grant to clean contamination from leaking underground fuel tanks

April 13, 2009 - The state has received $3.7 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up soil and groundwater contamination from leaking underground fuel tanks in 70 sites across Maryland - about half of them in the Baltimore area.

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Exxon faces environmental contamination lawsuit in Maryland

March 23, 2009 - Ninety-one families who sued Exxon Mobile for environmental contamination have been awarded $150 million in their lawsuit. The lawsuit followed a gasoline leak that contaminated wells and forced people to buy bottled water.

The leak occurred in 2006, when an underground storage tank leaked approximately 26,000 gallons of gasoline. The leak went on for 37 days before it was discovered. Families were awarded approximately $1 million each for emotional distress plus the value of their homes and medical monitoring.

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Gasoline leak contaminates groundwater at Utah hotel

March 25, 2009 - Salt Lake City issued a cease and desist order against the downtown Red Lion Hotel to prevent them from pumping any more contaminated water into the city sewer system.

Guests and employees noticed a strong petroleum smell at the Red Lion Hotel on 600 South. State investigators found a leak in an underground storage tank at the Sinclair gas station next door. “It was a gasoline smell that the people in the hotel noticed and called the fire department,” said Utah Department of Environmental Quality Program Manager John Menatti.

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Two Michigan homes demolished due to contaminated soil; four more to be razed

October 14, 2008 - Like a warm smile with a sudden gap, a pleasant Muskegon Township neighborhood lost two of its oldest homes Monday -- doomed to demolition by a lingering legacy of oil in the soil.

Four more homes in the neighborhood will crash into splinters in coming days.

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Contaminated wells in Oregon

June 4, 2007 - State water officials are making house calls to rural well users this spring as part of a plan to clean up groundwater contamination in the southern Willamette Valley.

Though a relative newcomer to the area, Marla McClean welcomed a checkup of her well water last week by Department of Environmental Quality hydrogeologist Audrey Eldridge and water sampling technician Michael Tichenor. McClean and her husband moved to their home on nearly an acre of land along Beacon Drive, north of Santa Clara, from Winnemucca, Nev., in late 2005.

"The water was so badly contaminated in some hot spots there that the water from some wells was undrinkable," she said. "Ours was not, but we still participated in the monitoring."

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