(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Officials will start taking soil samples Friday morning near a Rolling Meadows gas station to try to determine the extent of a gasoline leak that happened late last month.
Some 30 – 50 gallons of gasoline are believed to have leaked into the ground near the Mobil station at Hicks Road and Euclid Avenue in Rolling Meadows, according to Glen Cole, the Rolling Meadows assistant city manager.
The gas then seeped into the sewer system, he said. A couple of days after the leak began, residents of 28 nearby homes started smelling gasoline vapors. Cole said residents are frustrated by what happened.
He said a gasoline leak alarm went off at the gas station early in the morning on June 25, but according to the state fire marshal, the owner reportedly thought it was a false alarm.
That turned out not to have been true.
Cole said the Rolling Meadows Fire Department controlled the vapors by flushing water through the sewer line for a couple of days until July 1.
“By sending the water through the line — about 200 gallons a minute — that keeps the gasoline kind of moving through the system [and] doesn’t let it build up,” Cole said. “It helps push the fumes along as well.”
He continued: “At no point did we ask anyone to evacuate. At no point did we think there was a need to do that. There were, again, fumes in the sewer, but they weren’t building up in the houses. We didn’t think that they posed a risk in that we could keep it under control, and we did.”
The owner of the gas station is responsible for hiring environmental cleanup companies, as well as any other costs related to the spill, Cole said.
Cole said he met with residents on Tuesday in an effort to give them as much information as he had.
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