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April 5, 2000

Title: 10,000-Gallon Diesel Fuel Leak Traced to Gary Bus Agency Tank

By Dave Orrick / Staff Writer

GARY - The crisp brick-and-sheet-metal headquarters exterior of the Gary Public Transportation Corp. on 35th Avenue belies serious nastiness going on in the water table beneath it for more than a month.

Since early March, a contractor has been working to clean up results of 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel that leaked from an underground tank, leeched into nearby ditches and storm sewers along 35th Avenue west of Grant Street and killed at least 60 to 70 fish, officials confirmed Tuesday.

The leak is believed to have started in late February or early March and continued for about a week until workers at the transit agency, smelling oil, took steps to stop it, according to officials from GPTC, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the Department of Natural Resources.

Shortly after the discovery, the agency notified IDEM and contracted Illinois-based United Laboratories to fix the problem.

The pollution has been mostly removed except from the ground immediately surrounding the agency's operations building, where it has been contained, officials said.

GPTC officials suggested the breach of the relatively new tanks was caused by work being done since last year on pipes connected to the tanks.

Metro Environmental of Wheeling, Ill., was paid roughly $180,000 to replace the pipes so the transit agency could comply with new federal regulations, GPTC spokesman Noble Dennie said.

"Our attorneys will be investigating their work," he said.

A vice president at Metro Environmental did not return phone calls Tuesday afternoon.

Mark Balasz, an environmental manager with IDEM, said no wells were polluted and no oil is believed to have reached the Little Calumet River.

The river is downstream from a ditch along 35th Avenue that was polluted but has since been dredged by United.

"Potentially, this could have been very severe, but (GPTC) notified us immediately and brought in the proper consultant for remediation," he said.

But the cleanup couldn't stop scores of fish being killed.

According to a DNR report read to the Post-Tribune, leaking oil seeped from the 20,000-gallon tank into a small retention pond on GPTC's property. Bullhead and carp living in the pond attempted to escape the noxious water through a culvert but became stranded and drifted into a storm sewer.

http://www.post-trib.com/news/story2/index.html

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), April 05, 2000