Property Damage - Major Utility

Westchester County, New York

Roux Associates was hired to provide a second opinion on a previous environmental investigation at a truck maintenance facility operated by a regional telephone company. As part of an underground storage tank (UST) replacement program, two gasoline USTs were removed and replaced at the site. No leakage or contamination was detected when the tanks were removed. Shortly after the tanks were removed, methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), a gasoline additive, was detected in a nearby public supply well. At the request of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), our client installed several monitoring wells on its property and detected MTBE but no other compounds. Based upon this result, the client's contractor wrote a report indicating the site was the source of the MTBE. The municipality owning the impacted well subsequently filed suit against our client seeking damages. Roux Associates recommended and conducted additional investigations that provided groundwater flow and geochemical data, indicating the source of the contamination was one or more upgradient gasoline service stations.

A report was prepared by Roux Associates and, based on this report, the lawsuit against our client was dropped.