How did a gas station leak tens of thousands of litres of gas into the ground without being immediately detected?
That question is top of mind for some as cleanup efforts continue at the Murray’s Irving and Irving I-24 truck stop on the outskirts of Woodstock.
Since mid-December, vacuum trucks have been working around the clock at the Beardsley Road site to clean up what could total more than 100,000 litres of diesel fuel from a cracked pipe leading to an underground storage tank.
But how such a large amount of fuel was able to leak into the environment without being immediately detected is unclear.
According to documents obtained by CBC News through a right-to-information request, the leak wasn’t noticed until contaminants were detected in the well water of a Tim Hortons restaurant across the parking lot.
For three months, crews have worked to clean up what could be more than 100,000 litres of diesel. But neither Irving Oil Ltd. nor the province has answered questions about how the leak went undetected.
This led to the closure of both the restaurant and the Irving station while cleanup crews responded.
Irving Oil Ltd. has not responded to requests from CBC about how the leak went undetected. Gas stations in New Brunswick are required to have systems that detect any leaks.
CBC News asked to speak with someone from the Department of Environment about how it was possible the leak went undetected. No one from the department was made available to answer questions.
Gas retailers have detection systems
Christine McAllister, owner and operator of the Ripples Little River Convenience, east of Fredericton, says there are “checks and balances” to detect leaks even at small independent gas stations.
“If I have some sort of equipment failure, I have alarms set up,” McAllister said. “It’s a really awful sound. I’ve only had it happen a few times for something really simple, but it’s really loud and piercing. Worse than a fire alarm.”
Her fuel storage tank is an above-ground model, but the regulations for leak detection are the same for underground units, she said..
McAllister said there are sensors that detect moisture around the fuel lines at her storage tanks, as well as at the pumps. But even beyond tripping alarm systems, she said, missing fuel would show up in her ledgers.
“If I’m paying attention to my numbers, it would let me know that something’s amiss,” McAllister said.
Every day, she prints off a copy of her fuel sales. Then she goes to the storage tank and measures the fuel amount using a large dipstick.
The amount of fuel sold corresponds with the amount left in her tanks. If any managed to leak out without tripping an alarm, it would still show up in her books.
She says even if it’s a trivial amount of leaked fuel the profit margins on fuel are so thin that she would still notice.
“If there’s some sort of equipment failure it might take a couple of days, but it wouldn’t take very long for you to figure it out.”
She said her fuel supplier, as well as the fuel delivery company, also has access to those numbers and would take notice when there are discrepancies.
“There are times when they even ask me to double check,” McAllister said.
She said she’s at a loss to explain how any gas station could lose tens of thousands of litres of fuel and not notice.
Green leader recalls explosions in ’80s
McAllister said there weren’t always strict regulations in place for storing and selling fuel.
In the 1980s, when Green Party Leader David Coon was with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, he worked on introducing regulations for fuel storage and leak prevention.
“We had a focused campaign on that, to bring in some regulations that would actually help protect people from leaks, prevent leaks,” Coon said in an interview.
The effort didn’t get much traction until disaster struck in Saint John one Saturday morning in 1986. A fuel leak at an Irving gas station in the uptown pooled in the city’s storm sewer system and ignited.
“There were explosions in Saint John, multiple explosions in Saint John; a very dangerous situation,” Coon said of the incident, which damaged seven buildings and forced the evacuation of a 16-block area.
“And that is what finally convinced government of the day to bring in proper regulations. And so, we’ve got a 67-page regulation now … in place since the ’80s, to prevent leaks from underground storage tanks and their systems, to ensure when there is a leak that it’s caught before it contaminates anyone’s water supply.”
Coon said he’s also at a loss as to how such a large leak wasn’t immediately detected.
“That regulation should be doing its job, but recently it has not,” Coon said. “The regulations, if they were properly followed, should have ensured that leak was detected before it got as bad as it did.”
In an email, Environment Department spokesperson Vicky Lutes said Irving Oil has to follow all relevant environmental legislation, including the petroleum product storage and handling regulation and the contaminated sites regulation.
“Meanwhile, Irving and its consultants are investigating the cause of the release, and remediation efforts at the site are ongoing.” Lutes wrote.
“The department is actively reviewing the file to ensure compliance with environmental regulations. To date the company has fully complied with all of our requests.”