Opinion ID: 183689
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: EQB Investigation

Text: Over the past seventeen years, there have been no formal enforcement proceedings before the EQB concerning the contamination at the filling station, nor has the EQB held any hearings, issued a final order, or approved a remediation plan for the site. The record discloses no substantive action at all by the EQB for the first eight years after it was notified of the leak. Since then, the EQB's investigation of the contaminated filling station has been conducted primarily by intermittent correspondence between the EQB and Shell, the highlights of which we summarize here. In February 2001, Shell wrote to the EQB to request that the filling station be removed from the Leaking Underground Storage Tank List, in light of the fact that no free product had been detected in the groundwater for three years prior. The EQB denied the request and directed Shell to conduct additional testing. When Chico ceased active operation of the filling station in July 2001, Shell again wrote to the EQB and requested authorization to remove the idle USTs from the site. The EQB approved the removal, though the five tanks were not actually removed until March 2004 due to a dispute between Chico and Shell over access to the property. Soil sampling results conducted in conjunction with the removal of the tanks revealed contaminant levels in excess of the applicable limits under the EQB's regulations. In response, the EQB asked Shell to prepare a site characterization plan [5] to define the plume of contamination at the site and submit a remediation plan for approval. Shell prepared a characterization plan, which the EQB approved on the condition that Shell conduct additional analysis to determine the direction of water flow at the site. Shell's testing pursuant to the characterization plan stretched over the following several years, with results reported to the EQB in two installments. In January 2007, defendant Solhaving purchased Shell in the interimsubmitted the first and primary report, which provided details on the extent and migration of contamination in soil and groundwater at the site. [6] Sol submitted a supplemental report in May 2008 disclosing the results of additional testing, which purportedly showed a decrease in soil contaminant levels. Based on these results, Sol contended that no soil remediation would be necessary, and it proposed that the lingering groundwater contamination be addressed through aerobic bioremediation (a technique to accelerate contaminant breakdown by natural processes). The submission of these results did not, however, signal an end to the investigation. Chico wrote the EQB in May 2008, taking issue with, inter alia, Sol's failure to take samples in the vicinity of the stream abutting the property and the absence of approved guidelines for risk assessment in cases involving USTs. The EQB apparently agreed with the latter point. It wrote to Sol in November 2008 and explained that the EQB was working with the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop guidelines for evaluating UST risk assessment studies, and that until those guidelines were finalizedwhich would necessitate approval by both agencies and a public hearing processthe EQB could not accept Sol's original report. The EQB also identified certain quality control issues with Sol's sampling process that required rejection of the report. The EQB sent a follow-up letter in January 2009 calling for Sol to prepare a new characterization plan to outline additional testing. Sol met with the EQB in February to discuss the EQB's requests. In April 2009, Sol submitted to the EQB new testing plans, a compiled report summarizing the testing conducted at the filling station to date, and a proposed remediation plan. In the accompanying letter, Sol argued that a plan for additional sampling was unnecessary. There is no indication of further action taken by Sol or the EQB between April 2009 and the present.