For the past three months, a red Do Not Enter sign has hung from the poles marking the boundaries of a 20-foot-deep hole located in front of Lummi Island’s only grocery store, The Islander. Caution tape wrapped around the rusted fence flutters in the wind.
The hole is 3 feet from of The Islander’s two front doors. Inside the store, frozen food, candy, chips, souvenirs and movies for rent line the walls. Outside, however, is the site of a 40-year environmental hazard — four leaking underground fuel storage tanks.
The Islander began pumping gasoline in 1963, but permanently shut its tanks down in 1990 to avoid new Washington State Department of Ecology maintenance requirements for underground fuel tanks, storeowner Brad O’Mally said.
"It wouldn’t have been profitable with the insurance costs and upgrades to continue pumping gas," O’Mally said.
O’Mally leases the property and building from the Johnson Family Trust, which bought the property and building in the early ’70s from a construction company. In 1985, the business was sold to Gerald and Becky McRorie. O’Mally purchased the business from the McRories in 1989, and stopped pumping gas the following year.
"We basically shut everything down," O’Mally said. "The tanks have been sitting there for the last 15 years."
When O’Mally attempted to purchase The Islander property, Key Bank denied him a loan. The bank said it would not approve the purchase until O’Mally removed the two 6,000-gallon fuel tanks and the two 2,000-gallon fuel storage tanks.
"The banks will not lend with tanks on any property because it’s a hazard," O’Mally said. "Let’s say I go bankrupt. Who will own the property? They will. And if something goes wrong, they’re liable. It’s smart business."
Ecology encourages and sometimes requires underground fuel-tank owners to monitor soil, groundwater and tank tightness. In 1990, however, regulations were not as concerned with underground fuel-tank maintenance.
"The only reason we found out the tanks’ pipes were leaking was because we had to remove them to buy the property," O’Mally said. "They would have just sat down there for years."
Owners must report underground fuel-tank leaks to Ecology’s Toxic Cleanup Program within 24 hours. If the contamination is confirmed, the owner must submit a report to the regional office within 90 days; if contamination is not confirmed, a site-assessment report is required within 30 days.
O’Mally and the Johnson Family Trust chose to clean up The Islander’s contaminated soil voluntarily. Ecology does not order, oversee or approve independent cleanups; however, if the owners need guidance from Ecology officials, a $500 deposit will cover eight hours of assistance, said Dale Myers, Ecology voluntary cleanup director.
"When owners permanently close tanks, we require them to go through a process and then they will never be able to pump gasoline again," said David Storey, an underground storage-tank inspector for Ecology.
O’Mally and the Johnson trust hired Bellingham-based Ultra Tanks in August to remove the underground fuel tanks and purify the contaminated soil. The Ultra Tanks crew is relocating the contaminated soil to a fenced-off area 20 feet away from the side of The Islander. They will then add nitrogen to the pile of soil and rototill it during dry weather to increase the evaporation of gasoline contaminants. Gasoline doesn’t degrade normally, but will degrade if burned or aerated. Moving the soil around with a rototill will accelerate evaporation, degrading the petroleum-pollution in the soils.
O’Mally and the Johnson trust began the task of cleaning up with the help of Ultra Tanks in August. Ultra Tanks will cover the mound of contaminated soil during the winter and begin working again when drier, warmer weather returns.
When the cleanup is complete, a privately hired site assessor will visit The Islander, take soil samples to ensure no gasoline is present and grant permission to refill the hole in front of the store with the once-contaminated soil. When the hole in front of The Islander is refilled, O’Mally plans to repave the parking lot and restore the access lane and 10 parking spots.
Although Ultra Tanks said it hoped to finish the decontamination process next summer, the controversy concerning the cost will not end so quickly for O’Mally.
"It’s a sticky situation and the lawyers are saying different things," O’Mally said. "One says I’m liable because I own the store, the other says the Johnsons are liable because they previously owned the store." O’Mally said his lawyers are not involved at this point.
Lawyers representing the Johnson and McRorie families are determining what percentage of the final cost each prior owner will pay, but the Johnson Family Trust has covered the expenses to date, O’Mally said.
"We thought it would be a simple job," O’Mally said. "But this is a lot more than we expected."
Senior Jackie LeCuyer studies journalism. She has been published in The Western Front and The Review, the student newspaper at Edmonds Community College.