COMPLIANCE INFO - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

i Mr. Thomas Brenkwitz - 2 - 30 January 2004 The Report states that the site has historically contained four residential homes and one small commercial building, which was used as a tire business. The businesses that operated at the site sold tires, patched, plugged, mounted and dismounted tires, and performed tire changes and wheel alignments. During these activities, lubricating oil and grease would have been used at the site. Currently, the site has one commercial building, a parking lot, and unlined storm water basin. The northern portion of the site is undeveloped. About 50 feet north of the site is an active Chevron pipeline that runs underground down the centerline of West Grant Line Road. This pipeline transports refined fuels, and formerly transported jet fuel. Directly to the west of the site is a former Chevron service station that has an ongoing investigation to clean up petroleum hydrocarbon pollution in soil and groundwater. Two Unocal 76 gasoline stations to the northwest of the site also have ongoing investigations to clean up petroleum hydrocarbon polluted soil and groundwater. Based on historical uses of the property, the proximity of up and cross gradient sites with ongoing investigation and cleanup of petroleum hydrocarbon pollution, the location of a pipeline that transports petroleum fuels, and low to non-detect levels in on-site soils, the groundwater petroleum hydrocarbon pollution at 541 West Grant Line Road is likely from offsite sources. California Water Code section 13304 authorizes Regional Boards, among other provisions, to order any person who "causes or permits"waste to be discharged where it "creates, or threatens to create, a condition of pollution or nuisance"to clean up the waste or abate the effects of the waste. The State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) in interpreting section 13304 has found the following classes of persons to be responsible as either causing or permitting a discharge of waste: (1) owners and operators at the time of initial discharge; (2) current property owners; (3) interim property owners in certain circumstances; and (4) certain lessees of property. In all of these State Water Board orders, the source of the groundwater pollution was at the property itself. The State Water Board has not addressed the issue of whether a property owner would be responsible for groundwater pollution underlying the property where the source of the pollution is off the property. Several Regional Boards, however, have included such owners as a responsible party in a section 13304 Order where access on their property was necessary to complete clean up or investigate the groundwater pollution, and the owner failed to provide reasonable access. In such cases, the orders did not require the owner to clean up the ground water, but rather, to provide reasonable access. Based on the State Water Board's past orders, an owner of property overlying groundwater pollution originating from an offsite source is unlikely to be held responsible for that pollution except for purposes of access or unless activities on the property exacerbate or contribute to that groundwater pollution. So long as operators at 541 West Grant Line Road property do not cause or permit, or have not caused or permitted, a discharge from the subject site, do not exacerbate, or have not exacerbated, the existing pollution, and do not deny reasonable access to address the petroleum hydrocarbon plume, such as allowing for the installation of groundwater monitoring or extraction wells on the property, if necessary, the Regional Board is not likely to find the owner responsible for the groundwater pollution beneath 541 West Grant Line Road.