Fuel Leak Contaminates Area at John Wayne

Jet fuel leaks have caused some pollution of ground areas at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport and also at Los Angeles International Airport, officials confirmed Wednesday.

But health and water-quality officials said neither seepage incident poses a serious threat to public health.

At John Wayne Airport, a jet fuel storage tank at American Air Center, 19461 Airport Way, leaked about 60 gallons of fuel on or about Jan. 14, said the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board. The board received a state-required report on the seepage incident Wednesday.

Kurt Berchtold, a senior engineer for the water quality board, said the slight leakage contaminated some soil at the airport. He said that the polluted soil was removed and that there is no threat to underground water or further contamination of water runoff. Berchtold also said the fuel leak has been fixed.

At Los Angeles International Airport, jet fuel seeped nearly 100 feet into the soil beneath fields of storage tanks there, officials in Los Angeles County said.

But they stressed that the contamination, discovered when an oil company drilled test holes around some tanks, poses no immediate risk to public health because no drinking water is drawn from that area. The risk of fire posed by fuel deep in the soil is “absolutely zero,” said a city Fire Department inspector.

Still, the seepage of flammable, toxic jet fuel is regarded as a “serious problem” that will require investigation and cleanup, said Hank Yacoub, supervising engineer for the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, the local arm of the state agency that investigates ground-water pollution.

He also said similar jet fuel contamination of soil and water “undoubtedly” exists at other airports. “If it’s at LAX, then definitely it’s at Long Beach Airport, at Burbank Airport,” Yacoub said.

The exact sources and extent of the pollution will not be known until more studies are made, he said. The fuel is thought to have resulted from a series of small spills at the airport’s vast tank farms, said Tom Kinley, a Los Angeles Fire Department inspector.