Chevron station manager says no leak found in tank, investigating possible overfills for diesel spill

The supervising manager of a Cheney gas station that is the source of a diesel spill into a nearby creek said Wednesday inspectors had not been able to see a leak in their underground tank.

“We have found no visual leak,” John Calcaterra, the supervising manager of the Chevron station on First Avenue, said Wednesday morning.

Crews with the city of Cheney’s Public Works Department and contractors working for the Department of Ecology have finished cleaning the storm drains that were the source of the spill into Minnie Creek, a small waterway that runs through town before heading north and feeding into Marshall Creek. Workers have removed 36,000 gallons of a water and diesel mixture from the creek as of Wednesday morning, said Ty Keltner, communications manager for the Spill Prevention, Preparedness and Response Program for the Department of Ecology.

The red-dye diesel tank that is believed to be the source of the spill can only hold 2,000 gallons of fuel, Calcaterra said, and the station’s capacity for all types of fuel is 18,000 gallons, though they typically don’t carry that much because of the fluctuating cost of gas, he said. The station is investigating whether a series of what Calcaterra called “mild overfills” of the diesel tank may have led to spillage after a report delivered Wednesday found no leaks in the tank. There had also been no alarms of a leak before Ecology informed the station of the spill, he said.

“We care. We were horrified by it,” Calcaterra said. “We’ve done everything we can.”

Calcaterra declined to say Wednesday who’d made recent diesel deliveries to the station.

Keltner said Ecology is responsible for the cleanup efforts and does not have regulatory jurisdiction to inspect the diesel tank at the Chevron. While cleanup costs are billed to the “responsible party,” the responsibility can change during a cleanup operation and investigation, he said.

“Sometimes it starts out being one person and ends up being another person or company,” he said. “Sometimes it’s multiple people or companies.”

Cleanup crews found dead plants along the creekbed last week after being alerted to the spill on July 19, Keltner said. It’s unclear how long the fuel, which is not taxed and restricted to use in heavy equipment and off-road vehicles, had been leaking into the creek.

Calcaterra said once the station was ordered to empty its red-dye diesel tank, they couldn’t find a clean-out crew that could respond quickly enough. So he called farmers he knew, and worked with an animal feed store next door, to alert farmers they’d be selling the diesel for half price in order to empty the tank quickly. The station did so at “a considerable loss,” Calcaterra said.

The station’s employees live and work in the community, he said, and are also concerned about the effects of the spill.

A helium test will be performed in the coming days on the diesel tank to confirm the finding of no leaks, Calcaterra said. The station has suspended sales of red-dye diesel until after that test is complete. Ecology and city of Cheney crews will continue working in the area this week, replacing absorbent material and sampling to determine if there’s further contamination, Keltner said.