The owner of a defunct Lynchburg gas station is working with the state to clean up the aftermath of a fuel leak first discovered in 2006.
The leak, described as “significant” in reports to and from the state Department of Environmental Quality, has been deemed non-threatening. There has been no impact to the city’s water quality.
Officials estimate it will take one to two years to remove the remaining contamination. The spilled gas has filtered down to the groundwater 30 to 40 feet below the surface.
“There’s quite a bit down there, and it’s a slow process,” said DEQ case manager Joey Daniel.
“It’s not considered to be a risk to human health or the environment, but we don’t leave (that kind of contamination) down there,” he added.
The fuel release centers on the former station’s location at the corner of Memorial and Oakley avenues. The station was already out of operation when the leak was discovered.
The property’s owner had converted the site to an auto repair shop and hired someone to dig up the underground gas tanks. That excavation revealed soil contamination around the fuel system’s pipes, as well as two islands of gas pumps still on the property.
Officials did not originally detect any groundwater impact. Subsequent monitoring picked it up in 2007.
According to Daniel, the gas has pooled together to form its own separate coating of liquid that sits on top of the water, creating two distinct layers.
Greene Environmental Services, a Rocky Mount company hired by the owner to address the damage, has been performing regular tests since then and manually extracting the fuel when it’s detected, according to reports submitted to DEQ.
A call made to Greene Environmental Services on Tuesday afternoon was not immediately returned.
A formal plan for corrective action will be submitted to DEQ by month’s end. Public comment on the proposal will be accepted through August.
Daniel said the plan will likely call for the installation of vacuum pumps that can suck up the gasoline and any related vapors. A pump system was previously piloted on the site with success, he said.
It’s not known when the fuel seeped out. Gas leaks were not uncommon at one point, and many were discovered in the late 1990s when stations moved to upgrade their aging systems to meet new regulations, Daniel said.
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