Sycamore gas station under IEPA investigation for soil contamination

SYCAMORE – A BP gas station in Sycamore has received city approval to take corrective actions to deal with the release of chemicals into the soil from an underground fuel tank, Sycamore officials confirmed this week.

Sycamore BP, 441 W. High St., previously had retained services from Eagle Environmental Consultants environmental investigations, according to county documents. The gas station also had received prior approval from the city for the installation of soil borings and monitoring wells.

When reached Friday, an employee at the gas station told Shaw Local News Network that the manager was not immediately available for comment.

On Aug. 9, eight soil boring samples were collected around the gas station’s underground fuel tanks, records show. Three samples were found to exceed tier two soil saturation limits for xylenes and one sample exceeding the default soil saturation limits for ethylbenzene.

Sycamore engineer Mark Bushnell said the soil contamination could extend beyond the business’s property line.

“The gas station has a leak in an underground storage tank, and the limits of the contaminated soil might be on their property lines,” Bushnell said. “This is basically a notice that if anybody’s doing work in the right of way that there’s contaminated soils, and they have to dispose of them properly.”

Long-term exposure to xylenes, a chemical that’s often blended into gasoline, can cause neurological effects such as headaches, dizziness, fatigue, tremors, incoordination, anxiety, impaired short-term memory and an inability to concentrate, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Short-term exposure to ethylbenzene can cause eye and throat irritation, and high levels of exposure can cause vertigo and dizziness, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There is no documentation of anyone being exposed to those chemicals in Sycamore, according to city documents. But each chemical has been found at high enough levels in soil borings to warrant an Illinois EPA-supervised investigation, documents show.

Rakeshkumar Patel, the owner of the downtown Sycamore business, according to city documents, was not immediately available when sought for comment.

Sycamore City Manager Michael Hall said Monday that the City Council’s approval of a highway authority agreement with BP is the only aspect of the soil investigation that the city will have a hand in. The rest will be handled by the IEPA.

“This does not require any public notice or any publication beyond the City Council’s approval tonight,” Hall said. “If there is something they need to do, IEPA will tell them what they need to do.”

The highway authority agreement includes the notification of the owners of any wells within 200 feet of the project. Bushnell said there are no known wells within 200 feet of the underground fuel storage tanks, however.

Still, in a letter to Hall, Bushnell wrote that “it is important to note that the limits of the contaminated soils extend off-site and into or beyond the right of way.”

Speaking during the City Council meeting Monday, Bushnell said the soil is fine if left undisturbed.

“They are fine if [the soil] remains in place. The IEPA has allowed that,” Bushnell said. “It’s just that if they get disturbed, [there’s] certain steps that you need to go through, and this kind of puts everybody on notice for that.”