County health agency to give update on gas station decontamination
The Orange County Health Care Agency will update Bridgeport neighborhood residents on the status of the Seal Beach ARCO gas station decontamination project on Tuesday, Feb. 8. It will be held at 7 p.m. in the City Council Chambers.
City officials and the Bridgeport Technical Advisory Committee, which is made up of five Bridgeport residents with backgrounds in environmental engineering, will also be present.
The underground storage tanks of the ARCO/BP America gas station, located at 490 Pacific Coast Hwy., have leaked at least twice since the 1980s.
Traces of gasoline vapor were found in the soil in the Bridgeport homes nearest the gas station in 2009. The discovery forced four families to temporarily leave their homes during the 2009 holiday season. Those families have since returned.
While only 25 Bridgeport homes were in the contamination or “study” zone, the entire Bridgeport neighborhood has been effected by the contamination issue.
Legally, property owners must disclose to potential buyers that the homes are located near a toxic site.
According to the county health agency, topics that will be discussed at the Feb. 8 meeting include:
• The tentative start date of excavation.
• The status of permitting process.
• The access agreement with the owner of the adjacent strip mall.
• Neighborhood remediation and additional soil vapor well installations.
Background
In 2010, ARCO first proposed using chemicals to remove toxic chemicals from the site.
Bridgeport residents, the Seal Beach Environmental Quality Control Board, the City Council and the Bridgeport Technical Advisory Committee all called for digging up and hauling away the contaminated soil.
ARCO then proposed using electricity to cook toxic chemicals out of the soil and groundwater at the site.
Again, the collective community response was to call for the “dig and haul” option. The OC Health Care Agency agreed and directed ARCO to excavate the site—in plain English, to “dig and haul.”
The current plan will include decontamination of area groundwater as well as the removal of contaminated soil.
The ARCO gas station will have to be demolished prior to the decontamination project.
This will likely have an impact on Seal Beach’s sales tax revenues.
According to HdL Companies, the ARCO station was one of the city’s top 25 sales tax revenue producers in the second quarter of 2010.
