JOHN HALES / MESSENGER PHOTO
Candace and Megan Anderson tidy up the entrance to the Casino Star Theatre Friday, even though the theatre closed due to elevated benzene levels from the Top Stop gas leak. The theatre plans to reopen as soon as levels are safe.

Gas leak victims see big response
By John Hales
11-21-07

GUNNISON—After three months of what some perceived as snail-like motion on the issue of the 20,000-gallon Top Stop gas leak, developments last week happened at a whirlwind pace.
On Tuesday, the city hired an attorney to represent it in possible litigation arising from the incident.
On Thursday, representatives from the state and from Top Stop met with city officials and residents to discuss the response of the leak up to that point, and how things would proceed after.
Then, on Friday, the gas leak took another toll, closing the city’s historic Casino Star Theatre.
In the middle of all that, some residents were forced to leave their homes, being displaced because of fumes from the leak, which were making, or could make, them sick.
In a special meeting of the Gunnison City Council on Tuesday, Nov. 13, the council formally retained the city’s attorney, Peter Stirba, to represent the city in possible litigation against Wind River Petroleum.
The action followed a similar one the week previous in which the council hired its own environmental consultant, Lance Hess, to provide analysis, information and advice independent of that provided by Top Stop and Wasatch Environmental, the consulting firm hired by Top Stop to remediate the spill.
Both actions indicated the dissatisfaction felt by many in the city that neither Top Stop, Wasatch Environmental nor the state were reacting adequately to the city’s needs in the leak’s aftermath, including information about the leak, its migration and possible impact.
At the same meeting that the city hired Stirba, the lawyer addressed about 50 city residents, and invited them to share their experiences with the leak with his
office.
Stirba said, “This is a complicated issue. It is not going to resolve itself tomorrow. It implicates health; it implicates public safety.”
He explained that the $1 million safety-net for environmental cleanup administered by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality would most likely not be used for damage claims.
“That particular fund is designed for cleanup reimbursement only. It doesn’t have anything to do with any other issues,” such as health or displacement issues, he said.
He said his and the city’s objective in a possible lawsuit, therefore, would be to have a “totally satisfactory cleanup, and to make sure that the public health and any issues related to our citizens are taken care of.”
That was in contrast to what he said was the goal of Top Stop and Wasatch Environmental, whose goal was simply, Stirba said, to clean up the leak itself.
“As Wasatch Environmental does its work, it is not concerned about you as individual citizens. That’s what we need to worry about. The problem with what Wasatch does is that we have no control, and they really are not accountable to us,” he said.
“We have already requested additional resources with the state because we’re not satisfied that adequate resources have been brought to bear on this problem,” he said.
Les Penington, of Wasatch Environmental, said his company and Top Stop were concerned about more than simply the bottom line.
“As environmental consultants, we are dedicated to resolving this situation. We’re concerned about people’s health, and we’re concerned about the environment, and so is Wind River Petroleum. They have instructed me to do whatever it takes to solve this problem,” he said.
He refuted the idea that that he had minimized the problem.
“In no way have I minimized anything. This is a serious release, and we are treating it that way,” he said. We are applying all the necessary resources to deal with this. And the state has instructed me to use every resource I need.”
Representatives from the state, two days later, came down to view the situation for themselves.
Officials from the Department of Environmental Quality as well as from Gov. Huntsman’s office, including his chief of staff Neil Ashdown, spoke to city officials and residents, and then were directed by Penington on a tour of sites affected by the leak.
The meeting brought together—for the first time since the leak last July—representatives from the city, the state and Top Stop Wasatch Environmental.
“Communication has not been good,” admitted the DEQ’s executive director Rick Sprott, at the same time acknowledging that the DEQ could have performed better “in our role in oversight” of the situation.
Sprott admitted that inadequate information was being passed on to the city and its residents. That resulted in the perception that not enough was being done, and resulting in confusion and even a degree of hysteria as people wondered how hazardous the situation was.
Sprott promised to improve communication and to increase the pace of recovery from the disaster, which was referred to in the meeting as one of the biggest spills in state history.
But the promise was not enough to prevent the leak from taking its most symbolically significant casualty—the Casino Star Theatre, the jewel of the city and its cultural and historical icon.
Due to highly increased levels of benzene, the theater closed, “for the foreseeable future,” said Stirba during a press conference at the theater to announce its temporary closure.
Though the theater’s owners, Lori Nay and Diana Spencer, planned to re-open the theater as soon as possible, perhaps as early as Dec. 7, closing the theater was a difficult decision.
““This is heartbreaking for us,” Spencer said. “It’s been so much a part of our lives.”
The theater is the fifth or sixth business to close because of the leak, and business at other Main Street locations has dwindled since early August, when the leak forced Main Street businesses to evacuate for a day. The cost to the city in lost infrastructure and beautification projects is already in the tens of thousands of dollars, and will almost certainly become greater.
But the closure of the theater struck a different chord.
“[The effect on businesses] strikes at the pocketbook of the community,” Spencer said. “The theater strikes at the heart.”
Nay and Spencer emphasized that the theater will re-open as soon as it is safe to do so, and that the closure will not affect the restoration effort.
In fact, scaffolding will soon be going up outside of the theater for work on the building’s exterior. The work is not related in any way to issues stemming from the gas leak.
Finally, on Monday, Wasatch Environmental’s Penington gave an update on remediation efforts.
“We’re continuing to investigate, and may have our investigation complete by next week,” he said, referring to the investigation to figure out where and how far the gasoline has gone underground.
He said the company had drilled about 130 boreholes for exploration, and had not yet encountered any significant amounts of “free product.”
Also, he said, “We’ve placed monitoring wells on the west side of 100 West, and we will monitor groundwater for any indications that the plume is migrating further.”
He said there were three soil-vapor extraction systems (SVEs) in operation, which basically vacuum the vapor from the soil. Those systems included “catalytic oxidizers which completely destroy the gasoline vapors that are being removed from the ground by the SVE systems, before emission to the atmosphere,” Penington said.
Before those oxidizers were installed, there had been complaints that the SVEs were emitting too many vapors into the air.
Penington said a fourth SVE system is currently being put together and will also be equipped with a catalytic oxidizer.