AMHERST — The pungent smell of gasoline greeted employees of Water Pollution Control Center early Thursday and led authorities to an underground gasoline leak.
Not knowing where the fumes originated, employees backtracked the smell until they reached a Marathon station at Cooper Foster Park and Leavitt roads.
Emergency Management Agency Director Tom Kelley said the gas station was shut down shortly after 7 a.m. as crews worked to find the leak .
“You could definitely smell it in the air,” Kelley said. “There were homes a mile west of that station reporting gasoline fumes in their basements.”
No one was hurt by the fumes, Kelley said.
Officials from several departments look at a trench at the edge of the Marathon gas station at the corner of Leavitt and Cooper Foster Park roads in Amherst. The trench was dug in an effort to pinpoint where gasoline was leaking from into the sewer system. (Photo by Bruce Bishop, The Chronicle-Telegram.)
Crews from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Amherst Fire Department, Amherst Utilities Department, Lorain County EMA and a private hazardous materials company worked together to contain the leak and rid homes of fumes.
“The city of Amherst should really be commended for their work,” Kelley said. “I have worked on many underground gasoline leaks where it takes days to find the source of the leak, but today it was a matter of hours and we knew the source. Whatever danger that might have been was mitigated by the city.”
By 2 p.m., Kelley said it was determined that about 800 gallons of gasoline had been lost from the station’s underground tank over a two-week period. The tank was on the north side of the gas station beneath a pumping island.
Station owner Ali Mohammad said that a vehicle that backed into a gas pump in the last two weeks may have played a role in the leak.
“When it happened, it didn’t seem like that big a deal, but now we suspect that may have had something to do with this,” Mohammad said Thursday night.
Gasoline also got into a lift station on Cooper Foster Park Road at Beaver Creek, Kelley said.
The amount elevates the leak to what is considered a reportable spill and will require cleanup oversight by both the Ohio EPA and the Ohio Bureau of Underground Storage Tank Regulations.
The leak closed the gas station’s pumps for the rest of the day. The convenience store operated inside the 10-year-old station’s converted service bays re-opened after about six hours.
“Please be sure to let everyone know the store is open,” Mohammad said. “People can still come in for coffee.”
Workers from Environmental Compliance Testing, a Cleveland-area company that specializes in cleanup of hazard materials spills, were still at the station as of 8:30 p.m. Thursday.
Contact Steve Fogarty at 329-7146 or sfogarty@chroniclet.com or Lisa Roberson at 329-7121 or lroberson@chroniclet.com.
