Old petroleum site cleanup nears completion
Though no danger posed at the site, neighbors worried when gas-scented fumes began during effort
The legacy of an old petroleum company just outside downtown Royal Oak came to the attention of neighbors last week in the form of gasscented fumes in the contaminated soil from leaky underground tanks.
Nobody smelled the gasoline vapors until a state cleanup started this month.
“I was contacted by one resident last week who lives on Harrison who said the fumes were intolerable,” said Judy Davids, the city’s community engagement specialist. “He said he couldn’t breath in his home and was nauseous.”
However, there are no dangers from the site, which is being cleaned up by the state department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, said City Engineer Holly Donoughue.
“EGLE gets (state) funding to clean up sites like this,” she said. “They are making sure as they clean up the site that there are no unhealthy or explosive levels (of gas) and are monitoring it.
They are digging down and it’s my understanding it’s stinky.”
The site is 155- by-100 feet at 230 East Harrison and runs along Delaware street, about a block northeast of Holiday Market.
A bulk petroleum storage and distribution business started there back in 1919 and operated until the late 1990s as the WayneOakland Oil Co., said Kim Ethridge, the EGLE project manager overseeing the cleanup.
“At this point we’re in the second phase of the project and backfilling it with clean soil,” she said.
Cleanup of the site actually started in 1997, when all the storage tanks above and below ground were believed to have been removed.
But Ethridge said the site was revisited recently and three underground tanks, ranging from 500 gallons to 900 gallons, were discovered Nov. 9.
Last year, workers used penetrating ground radar that showed no underground tanks. It turned out that the three tanks evaded detection by ground radar because they were beneath concrete slabs.
“When we peeled back the concrete it really started to stink,” Ethridge said. “That was week two of our excavation and is what caused the heavy odor. As soon as we dug out the second shovelful you could smell it and we did get complaints. It smells when you first expose it, which is why we have meters there that if there were explosive levels (of gas vapor) there it will notify us and we can make sure there were no dangerous levels.”
The odor dissipated after Nov. 11 as the soil was removed.
Workers dug down 16 feet to remove the three old tanks, which had holes in them and leaked either gasoline or oil into the ground.
The petroleum seeped into the soil and the groundwater. EGLE workers removed 6,240 tons of soil from the site and pumped out 20,000 gallons of contaminated groundwater.
The water was taken from the location in a special tank by an industrial waste hauler, Ethridge said.
Groundwater is not used for drinking water in the region. The contaminated water at he site did not feed into any surface waters or streams, she added.
“It was not a risk to wildlife,” Ethridge said, “but is important to keep our groundwater healthy.”
About 8,000 tons of new soil is being compacted into the excavated site.
After that is done, workers will repair fencing and resurface the area with concrete and gravel so that it can be redeveloped. Work should be completed by Dec. 11 at a cost of around $800,000, Ethridge said.
There are about 8,000 other sites statewide where soil or groundwater have been contaminated with gas or oil products from old leaking tanks.
Funding for EGLE to clean up the sites comes from 0.9- cent state tax on gasoline sales. The department also gets money from unclaimed beverage bottle deposits, typically when the bottles are recycled.
More information on land cleanup and using contaminated property is available on the EGLE’s website at michigan.gov/ eglerrd
Workers dug down 16 feet to remove the three old tanks, which had holes in them and leaked either gasoline or oil into the ground.