Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505150001
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: FAIRFAX LENGTH: Long
Adams remembers the stream as a place where children once played. It's not anymore.
County health officials traced the oil to a collection of gasoline tank farms about a quarter-mile away. Soon, bulldozers roamed the streets, homes were evacuated and the community of Mantua became the place to which no one wanted to move.
Eventually, Star Enterprise, a Texaco affiliate that also operates a tank farm in the Montvale area of Bedford County, was found responsible for a 200,000-to-300,000-gallon underground leak that made its way into the stream and underneath homes.
About 40,000 gallons have been recovered so far. It's expected to take another decade to collect another 40,000 gallons because the oil is soaking into the soil and ground water, making it harder to clean up.
The leak ranks 21st in size out of the top 25 petroleum leaks in the nation, according to Friends of the Earth, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that tracks oil spills and leaks. The leak prompted Virginia to enact strict rules for large tank farms, which now must routinely monitor ground water, inspect their facilities for leaks and take measures to prevent pollution.
Star has paid more than $50 million in damages to homeowners. It bought 79 homes at premium prices and paid to hook up 100 homes to public water and sewer lines. The State Water Control Board fined Star $2.75 million.
Now, every homeowner in Mantua has a 10-year legal guarantee from Star protecting the value of his or her home. If an owner can't find a buyer after a home has been on the market six months, Star will buy the house at a fair market price.
But there's little consolation in cash for Mantua residents. Their property values have fallen drastically, and some worry about health problems.
``Tank farms and homes do not mix,'' Jack Maskell, a Mantua resident, said. ``You cannot have a tank farm in a residential area. There's just too much that can go wrong.''
Maskell remembers gasoline fumes rising from the manholes in the middle of his street. At the height of the contamination, the underground petroleum was about 9 feet thick in places.
``It was like living in a gas station. It was terrible,'' he said. Star later paid to have the storm drains sealed with a rubber liner to reduce the smell.
Now Maskell is concerned about benzene, a component of gasoline that causes cancer. He's worried about the health of his two children and his wife, all of whom had asthma that seemed to clear up after they moved.
``Our son used to play in the creek and near it, but once we smelled petroleum, we wouldn't let him play there,'' Maskell said.
A three-doctor panel has been established to study the short-term health risk to Mantua residents. They will decide this year if they will continue the study. Some lawsuits filed against Star over alleged health problems from the contamination still are pending.
Star Enterprise first tried to settle with some homeowners for $25 each and permission to dig in their yards. The homeowners refused.
Star ended up buying Maskell's house for an undisclosed amount as part of the settlement of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed by homeowners. Maskell now lives about a mile east of the contaminated area.
On Tovito Drive, his old street, Star now owns all the houses. The same is true of the street behind it.
Until Star can find buyers, the two blocks of expensive, two-story homes are occupied by renters.
A white, two-story house with a stone garage was condemned a few years ago. Contamination had traveled under the house, creating the risk of an explosion. In the back yard are five deep trenches dug to prevent the oil from returning.
Behind that house, another home, considered unsafe for dwelling, sits empty. Next door is a massive $300,000 two-story brick home where Star's local terminal manager lives.
In the middle of the streets, concrete squares mark monitoring wells dug to check for contamination. Horizontal pipes buried in the front yards make ridges in the grass.
In the yards, environmental scientists are testing a new clean-up method, forcing water into the ground to herd contaminated soil particles to a place they can be more easily collected.
Some Fairfax County homeowners feel Star lied to them. They also feel state and local government didn't do enough to prevent the contamination.
Only a month before the leak was discovered, Texaco environmental supervisors awarded Star's Fairfax tank farm their highest environmental accolades. That was based on on-site operational practices and the fact that the tank farm was up-to-date on filing key paperwork with state and federal authorities.
Texaco's environmental auditing staff, led by executives with no training in environmental science or toxicology, did no soil drilling or water testing and it did not check underground pipes or tank bottoms.
Initially, Star's management denied responsibility for the Fairfax leak. Environmental tests ordered by Star in 1990 showed no contamination or leaking pipes or tanks.
When a task force appointed by then-Gov. Douglas Wilder ordered an independent inspection in 1991, it found 12 leaks on Star's property in Fairfax.
It also was found that Star's loading rack in Fairfax had no underground tanks to collect oil. Oil trucks that fuel up at the loading racks frequently emptied old fuel and residue out on the racks. A Star spokesman said the loading racks may not have had the collection tanks ever since they were built in 1965. Star never informed the state Water Control Board about this before the leak was discovered.
Investigators working for the homeowners' law firm also discovered that some alarms to warn about spills at Star had been broken for years and never were replaced or repaired.
Kenneth Lattimer, Star's manager of environmental health and safety, oversaw 20 tank farms from Baltimore to Louisiana in Star's Southeastern region, which includes Fairfax and Montvale. His job was to make sure the sites complied with environmental law. He also coordinated cleanups when spills happened.
In a 1992 deposition for the Fairfax homeowners' lawsuit, Lattimer said he has no training in environmental science or toxicology. His college degree is in architecture.
His entire knowledge of the dangers of ground-water contamination came from a 1985 seminar about the federal Clean Water Act, he said.
Another Star environmental supervisor wrote a memo, which was leaked to the media, in which he proposed to ``divide and conquer'' the homeowners.
Even though the governor's task force recommended that the tank farms be moved and a lawyer for the homeowners tried to have the farms condemned by the local planning board, Fairfax city officials allowed the farms to stay.
Sally Ormsby, president of the Mantua Citizens Association, says she's not bitter, but she does want to change the bad image of her community.
``There's nothing to be concerned about as far as everyday life goes,'' she said. ``But this puts a stigma on the community. It depressed property values in addition to the environmental problems.
``Even if you lived a couple miles away, you suffered while not being affected by the contamination.''
by CNB