 "Photo: Erika Rich")
Owners of a downtown office building began the cleanup process this week for an abandoned, submerged fuel oil tank that spilled its contents onto Sixth Street in January.
A permit granted by the city on Aug. 13 allowed the owners of the Littlefield Building, located on the corner of Sixth Street and Congress Avenue, to remove all traces of oil from inside the tank and surrounding soil beginning Monday.
The tank, located in an alley behind the building, will be emptied and filled with cement, a process called abandonment-in-place, said Stan Tindel, environmental compliance specialist for the City of Austin Watershed Protection and Development Review. If not treated, groundwater will push the tank through the surface of the alley, and removing the tank would be too expensive because of surrounding utility lines, Tindel said.
Tindel said there are no laws in Texas that require an abandoned fuel oil tank to be removed by the owner. Instead, the abandoned tanks are filled with cement to prevent movement. Contractors will test the surrounding area and implement monitoring wells around the tank to determine whether the surrounding water and soil is contaminated with oil, he said.
The cleanup process has so far included a rinse and steam-cleaning of the tank to ensure no traces of oil remain, Tindel said.
HVP Austin Littlefield, which owns the building, refused to comment on its involvement in and estimated cost of the cleanup process but has hired an engineering company to clean the tank, said Andrea Morrow, a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokeswoman.
The commission, a state agency responsible for protecting natural and human resources, will ensure the tank is cleaned in ways that are environmentally sound and will dispose of any contaminated soil in an appropriate landfill, Morrow said.
"There is not much concern at this point," Tindel said. "The site doesn't pose any threat."
Tindel said more tanks may have been installed in the early 1900s but those tanks would have been revealed during the construction of recent downtown projects.
More than 4,000 gallons of fuel oil from the spill drained into Waller Creek but, once cleaned, did not reveal any damage to aquatic life.
Be the first to comment on this article!