MONROEVILLE – There’s little doubt that Jerry’s Marathon has seen better days.
A former service station near downtown Monroeville, the building is now dilapidated and rotting, abandoned along a stretch of Main Street just over some railroad tracks and across the way from a few houses.
The paint on the building is peeling, and the inside of the structure is littered with cans and boxes.
And underneath a yard littered with broken wooden skids, oil drums and a rusting Chevy Eurosport is a gasoline storage tank system that’s leaking.
It’s one of more than 2,100 sites in Indiana with leaking tanks, many of which contain gasoline and diesel fuel that can damage soil and groundwater, according to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
Unlike many of those sites, though, the tank under Jerry’s Marathon will be fixed with money from the government.
Two years ago, Indiana received $4 million in federal stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fix such leaking storage tank systems. The money – $2.6 million of which has already been spent – is going toward the cleanup or repair of 28 sites statewide.
But that will hardly make a dent in the number of leaking storage tanks throughout the state, which property owners are responsible for and could require more than an estimated $400 million to completely fix.
Fine assessed
The 28 sites chosen to receive the stimulus money all have something in common with Jerry’s Marathon:
“Typically, those are sites where the responsible party is no longer around or is bankrupt,” said Bruce Palin, IDEM’s assistant commissioner for the office of land quality.
In other cases, the owner of the property must pay for tank repairs as well as cleanup of the surrounding environment, according to IDEM. This includes testing the soil and groundwater to gauge the extent of the leak.
Failure to properly take care of any problems can result in fines and penalties. Since Jan. 1, 2009, IDEM has collected $227,689 in fines through the enforcement of cases involving leaking underground storage tanks.
For some property owners, finding out they even have an underground storage tank can come as a surprise.
“There have been many documented cases like that,” said Cheryl Ryan, the director of business development at SES Environmental, a company with a Fort Wayne office that repairs and addresses damage done by underground storage tanks.
Before 1988, underground storage tanks, which can contain almost any liquid but usually store petroleum or diesel fuel, did not have to be registered with the government.
Laws passed at the end of the 1980s required that property owners notify the federal government if they had such a tank. If they did, the tank also had to meet, by 1998, new regulations designed to help prevent leaks.
While this caused many property owners to rip out and replace their tanks with improved models, many also simply walked away, abandoning their property.
New owners for those properties would take over and never know they had a tank until a leak occurred.
“A lot of times, you end up dealing with people who just didn’t know and are trying to correct a problem they never knew existed,” Ryan said.
And along with such a problem comes a variety of solutions.
Sometimes, leaking fuel is confined to the soil, where over time it degrades. Sometimes large areas of soil must be dug up, which will in effect clean any nearby water that might be contaminated. Sometimes liquid and sludge can be removed from an abandoned, inaccessible tank, while other contaminants can be sucked from the ground.
“There’s so many ways to skin a cat,” said Rose Gabet, a senior project manager for SES Environmental.
There are also different state requirements for cleaning residential areas compared to industrial areas. Prices for such projects can fluctuate, with IDEM estimating the cost of an average fix and cleanup at $200,000 in 2011.
Continuous testing
Many places with underground storage tanks are gas stations, but not all.
A list of 207 Allen County locations with storage tank leaks that are considered “open,” or still needing attention, by IDEM includes: the former National Guard Armory on South Clinton Street; a former fire station on Fairfield Avenue; the Time Corners shopping center; and Lindenwood Cemetery on Main Street.
Just last month, the Lutheran Health Network reported to IDEM that a storage tank at 2123 Lincolnway Court, off Bluffton Road, had begun to leak.
But when a leak is considered “open” by IDEM, that could mean merely that ground testing continues after the storage tank has been taken care of.
A representative for Lindenwood Cemetery said officials got rid of the storage tank there in 1992 after it leaked, but soil testing in the area continues. That’s typical, according to Ryan and Gabet, who both said continuous testing over time is sometimes needed.
“It’s a very methodical process,” Ryan said.
According to IDEM, there are 2,152 leaking storage tanks throughout the state, but that is by no means a comprehensive count. Those are just the ones that officials know about, and there could be countless others that have yet to be detected.
“It’s a continual moving target,” said Barry Sneed, IDEM spokesman. “The number is always changing.”
Plus, according to IDEM, each case is in a different stage of cleanup. There are 200 to 300 cleanups completed per year while the agency receives 150 to 170 new confirmed reports of leaking tanks during the same time.
Land reclaimed
Of the 28 sites with leaking storage tanks marked to receive stimulus money in Indiana, Jerry’s Marathon is the only one in Allen County.
The most recent owner of the building could not be reached for comment.
IDEM, though, has sent him several letters over the years trying to contact him about his storage tank system, which was reported as leaking or not meeting regulations as early as 2006, according to documents on the agency’s website.
The owner was warned by IDEM several times of fines, but it’s unclear whether he ever responded to IDEM or ever faced any fines.
An inspector with IDEM had been to the site Sept. 12, though, and found not much had changed since the previous inspection months earlier – cans and boxes in the building, piles of wood and a rusting car in the gravel.
“Facility abandoned – tanks still exist,” the report said.
So far, many of the sites receiving the stimulus money are either being turned into parks by their respective communities or are being fixed and cleaned so the grounds can finally be sold, according to Palin.
It’s unclear what Jerry’s Marathon will become or when work on it will begin, but $130,000 has been earmarked to fix and clean the area around the building – and to maybe bring back its better days.
