Benzene Contaminating Underground Water in Fountain Valley : County Says It Has ‘Handle’ on Gasoline Leak

A major underground gasoline leak has been detected at a Fountain Valley service station, but it poses no immediate danger to the public, officials said Saturday.

“We have a good handle on it, and I don’t think that the public is at risk,” said Robert E. Merryman, director of the Environmental Health unit of the Orange County Health Care Agency.

The leak, the largest since the Environmental Health unit began monitoring underground tanks in 1983, originated from the connections of at least one of the three storage tanks under the Thrifty gas station in the 1700 block of Brookhurst Avenue.

Merryman said tests detected concentrations of 16,400 parts per billion of benzene, a gasoline component and a carcinogen, in underground water below the tanks. The state’s allowable limit for benzene is 0.7 part per billion.

Also found in the water samples were high levels of toluene and xylene, two components of gasoline suspected of causing cancer.

“This is not a very desirable condition,” Merryman said Saturday, “but we don’t want the public to panic. Gasoline travels very slow underground. . . .

“We are not reporting the spill because it is a health hazard,” he said, “but because we are legally required (to do so) under Proposition 65,” the 1986 antitoxics initiative.

Drinking water and air samples taken at the gas station and adjacent sites have tested negative for toxic chemicals, he said, and a drinking water well located a quarter of a mile away from the spill also is free of contaminants.

“We are monitoring the well very closely,” Merryman said, “but it could take months before a minuscule trace of pollution shows up, and months after that until (the contamination) becomes a health hazard.”