Pennsylvania families want more testing after tank farm gas leak: “I just want to be able to sleep at night”
By Joe Holden
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DELAWARE COUNTY, Pennsylvania (KYW) — Carriage Lane in Aston Township, Delaware County, is lined with single-family homes. It’s quiet and tight-knit.
“We’ve been here since 2003,” Ashley Hoy said. “We all grew up together. We stick together like family.”
The homes and the many families like the Hoys and Kathy Culp’s came years after the Chelsea Tank Farm across the street.
It’s the Bethel Township neighborhood on the other side of the tanks that’s received most of the attention.
Earlier this month, gasoline vapors were detected in two homes. Both Hoy and Culp want help for their neighborhood.
“Just come back and tell us that our neighborhood is fine,” Culp said.
“I’m just asking for testing to be done,” Hoy said. “I’m not asking for the whole road to be tested, this whole community, I’m one house, one house. [It] doesn’t have to be ours.”
Hoy believes testing should happen due to their close proximity to the tank that leaked more than 300,000 gallons of gasoline underground.
CBS News Philadelphia has followed the environmental catastrophe that is the subject of state and federal investigations. Sources say they expect the federal agency overseeing the tank farm to issue a report in the near future about what went wrong. Nothing criminal is suspected, according to multiple law enforcement sources. The leak was discovered in mid-December — an estimated 9,000 gallons of gas leaked. It’s believed it started and remained undetected since August.
For Culp, testing would be a better start toward getting some relief.
“If one house gets tested, comes back negative, we’re all going to be like, OK, you know what, we’re OK, we’re good,” she said.
A spokesperson for MIPC LLC provided CBS News Philadelphia with information showing the Carriage Lane area is in what they consider a safe zone that’s not impacted by the gasoline leak. Sources said testing would likely be invasive.
Of the many monitors around the company’s property, none has shown petroleum-related contamination, according to MIPC.
In a statement, MIPC said:
We’ve been in communication with residents living to the north of tank 708, and we certainly acknowledge and understand their concerns. After nearly five months of work, the data and evidence from over 100 monitoring points have shown, and the PA Department of Environmental Protection agrees with the following:
There is no impact to residents who live beyond the Eastern, Southern, or Northern perimeters of our property The gasoline is located along the western border of our fenceline, and offsite on a handful of properties in that area at this time “The response I get from the company is that we are in the safe zone. I’m not sure if we’re in the same zone,” Hoy said.
Meanwhile, the company says mitigation systems were installed in the homes where gasoline vapors were detected and those families have returned.
The cleanup of the gasoline continues in the areas affected.
Ashley Hoy says she’ll continue her persistence.
“I don’t believe I’m asking for too much at all,” she said. “I just want to be able to sleep at night knowing that my family is safe.”
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