Politics & Government

City Moves Forward With Soil Cleanup at Former Fire Station

$600K approved by council; Money to be repaid using state funds

Twenty-three years since the city began soil cleanup of a former fire station, the work is still ongoing. On Monday, the city council approved borrowing $600,000 from the city’s Risk Management Fund to continue remediation of an underground storage tank at 301 Payran Street, whose soil and potentially groundwater are contaminated with petroleum despite years of cleanup efforts.

“Before the environmental regulations were what they are now, many old gas stations put in any tank that worked—which only had one lining— and left them there and over time they would start to leak,” said Larry Zimmer, a capital improvements division manager for Public Works.

He stressed that the contaminated soil and groundwater do not pose a danger to drinking water.

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From 1950 to 1981, the site was a Petaluma fire station, according to Petaluma Fire Marshall Cary Fergus. Remediation work began in 1987, when the State Water Resources Control Board removed a 5,000 gallon tank of gasoline.

But because soil cleanup technology was not as effective as it is today, the soil has continued to test positive for contamination, meaning the property cannot be developed or sold. Most recently, the site housed , a soup kitchen run by .

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The new funds will allow the city to begin a process called dual phase extraction, which will remove soil, groundwater and vapor from the site. The loan to the city will be repaid over the next five years using monies from State Water Resources Board.

“It was nobody’s fault that it didn’t get cleaned earlier,” Chief Fergus said. “It’s just that the technology wasn’t there… Now we are trying to be proactive and move forward to get it cleaned. There needs to be an end to these types of things.”

There are about 50 sites around Petaluma that have soil contamination and which are being monitored by the state, Fergus said. The only other contaminated property owned by the city is an underground storage tank at the Petaluma Airport, which has tested positive for fuel and petroleum-based products.


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