Власти округа Лейк санкционировали проверку подземных резервуаров на территории суда

At the Lake County Board of Commissioners meeting Aug. 26, commissioners authorized the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy to access the courthouse property to investigate and assess a confirmed underground storage tank release. Remediation was completed about 10 years ago, but a closeout report was never completed. Lake County Administrator Tobi Lake gave commissioners some background information. “Let’s go back a long time, way before probably any of us. The sheriff’s office [on the courthouse grounds] used to have underground tanks for gasoline right in this area. So what happened at some point was that they were leaking underground storage tanks, so there was a remediation program. So, when I started there was a trailer parked right outside this room [the commissioners’ room in the courthouse], and that trailer was connected to the basement where our storage area is kind of below us, and they would do two things. They would monitor vapors from the ground from oil and gas where that leaked, and they were pumping water up in layman’s terms, cleaning it and putting it back down, so they had test wells, even into the parking lot. When I started that was going on,” he said. Lake said at the time, maintenance was working for the sheriff’s office, and when the remediation was completed, officials said they could disconnect and sell the trailer. Around that time, the county signed a protective covenant. “The concern is that the chemicals in the oil and gas could get into the water table, but everybody doesn’t have a well, they’re on municipal water, so it’s really not an issue if the chemicals go through, but they monitor that plume, because if that plume starts racing to the southeast, the municipal wells, people’s private wells outside of the village, we got to monitor that,” he said. With the protective covenant, the county agreed with the Village of Baldwin that if the roadway in the designated protected area ever has to be torn up for water, sewer or other work, soil that may be contaminated would be taken to a special landfill at the county’s expense and replaced with new sand. If the ground is not disturbed, it is not an issue, Lake said. Lake said EGLE recently reached out to the county and said it had funds available to test the groundwater and vapor and make sure there are no issues because the agency never received a closeout report. Lake pulled up an email from about 10 years ago that stated an air sample and laboratory analysis confirmed there were no significant gas vapors from the remaining contamination and that the closure report would be finalized. However, that never happened. Lake said EGLE’s assessment may show no contamination, but if contamination is found, it may cost money to address it. “When you deal with brownfields and stuff, they deal with land use. If it’s going to be out in a field for a golf course, probably the level is this, but if it’s going to be in a residential with houses here and commercial maybe here — so we’re saying it was cleaned up enough at the time, but closure report should have been done,” he said. “It very well could be nothing, and they said nothing more has happened and they’re going to test, and they’ll finalize processing, but you never know, because it wasn’t all gone. It was all gone good enough for that time. I looked at this at every angle unless you want to spend a bunch of money for the front side, it isn’t going to protect you on the back side. So you can hire an environmental firm and spend a couple thousand grand and if it has not dissipated as expected 10 years ago or if it has come back or receded, we’re still going to have costs. Ten years ago it should have been done,” Lake said. “Sometimes you’ll find the half-life of a chemical is 40 years, so the groundwater is here, you just let it go, then what’s a land use? Well put in a playground, it doesn’t have deep footings. Don’t put in a skyscraper that is 40 ft. down because it’s going to impact it, so sometimes they just let it run its course and monitor it.”