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Work hopes to eliminate decades-old contaminants
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · December 18, 2014


Trying to finally fix a decades-old problem, workers blocked part of East Main Street for a week to inject a compound into the soil that “eats” gasoline that leaked from an underground storage tank.


West Branch Repairs and Barnhart’s Custom Services, located at 412 East Main, occupy a building once known as West Branch Oil, a gas station that operated in the 1960s and 1970s.

Back then, gas stations used metal underground tanks that were known to rust and, sometimes, leak. So the federal government started requiring owners to carry insurance and began charging fees to gas stations and put that money into a Leaking Underground Storage Tank Fund. Also, for each gallon of gas you buy, 0.1 cent goes into the LUST fund.

If a tank should leak fuel and contaminate the surrounding soil, insurance was required to clean up the spill. The LUST fund pays for cleanup oversight and, if necessary, emergency funding if a spill immediately threatens human health or the environment.

West Branch Oil had a leaky tank and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources became aware of it in the 1980s, when Marv Brick owned the building. Bruce Barnhart bought the building from Marv Brick and, after the two covered the deductibles, insurance and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources took over the cleanup.

Barnhart said that, as the building’s owner, he works with an environmental consulting firm called Seneca, which works with the state and insurance to clean up the soil. About a decade ago, the ground from the front of the building to Main Street was dug up and hauled away to remove most of the contaminated soil.

“But they did not dig into the street,” Barnhart said.

So, last week Seneca brought in Vironex, headquartered in Delaware, to bore holes into the street and deep enough into the ground to inject, at high pressure, a black compound, or agent, that “eats” the oil, Barnhart said.

The City of West Branch gave Vironex permission to bore the holes, Public Works Director Matt Goodale said, with the stipulation the street must be repaired afterward.

Barnhart said Vironex would bore 57 holes in the road adjacent to the property.

“The idea is that this will fix the problem with out really expensive or inconvenient work,” he said.

Vironex arrived last Monday to prepare, and conducted the boring and injection work, which on its Web site it calls “Search and Destroy,” from Tuesday through Friday.