Crews clean up gasoline

Crews pumped more than 9,000 gallons of gasoline-contaminated groundwater from underneath the Exxon station on Meridian Road and West Idaho Street on Friday.

Officials estimated that the groundwater contained about 1,000 gallons of gasoline.

City crews are digging dry wells below the water table to collect the remaining groundwater-gasoline mixture, said Kalispell Human Resources Director and acting City Manager Terry Mitton, the incident commander. City Manager Jim Patrick is on vacation.

By 2 p.m., city crews had already dug two collection sumps and were working on a third. Two or three additional sumps were planned for late Friday evening, Mitton said.

Officials bought four 1,500-gallon holding tanks to keep up with the pace of the pumping, Mitton said.

Even though the leak in an underground transfer pipe is believed to have been stopped Thursday, the soil was still so saturated that fuel was seeping through joints in the storm drain, Mitton said.

Crews blocked off both ends of the drainage system near the leak with petroleum absorbing booms, stopping the spread of gas through the rest of the storm sewer, he said.

"We've almost depleted the supply of booms in the Flathead Valley," Mitton said. "We're having to bring in some more from Helena."

While crews haven't been able to pinpoint the leaky transfer pipe's exact location, they pumped the entire contents of the station's underground storage tanks into waiting trucks Thursday.

The leak prompted officials to first close Meridian Road between Center Street and West Idaho Street on Wednesday. Portions of Meridian Road north of West Idaho Street were also cordoned off.

The southbound lanes of Meridian Road between Husky and West Idaho Streets are still closed "indefinitely," according to the Kalispell Police Department.

Authorities had been monitoring the growing quantity of gasoline in the storm drains since Saturday, but it wasn't concentrated enough for investigators to identify a source until Wednesday, Mitton said.

The Montana Department of Environmental Quality was notified of the leak Monday.

The gas station passed its last inspection, which was in 2006, according to the Department of Environmental Quality.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com