The ice cream stand departs

[rolanni]

Fourteen years after the procedure that was supposed to be done in six months, we are finally free of the Maine Department of Environmental Persecution. OK, so the testing wells still need to be filled with flowable fill, capped and landscaped, and the bare spot at the corner of the driveway where the testing station (aka "the ice cream stand") sat for so many years needs to be graded and graveled, but these are minor things, and hardly a speck upon our shiny new freedom.

The moving of the ice cream stand was the shining apex of the day. Otherwise, got off to a rocky morning (Note to self: do not take the new drug on an empty stomach, no matter what it says on the label), which meant I didn't get to the gym 'til late, which meant that it was more crowded than I like, though not impossibly so. Also saw the sun for two brief twenty minute periods, before the clouds closed in again, just lately producing rain. All of my old war wounds are complaining, loudly, and suing for a move to Arizona.

No checks in the mail, nor reversion letters, either; Mr. Spielberg did not call to offer the Standard Rich and Famous Contract; the elves did not finish writing Carousel Tides for me last night...

Still not king.

The weekend looks to be shaping up wet, for a change. I do believe I'll stay in and write.

Progress on Carousel Tides

79,560 / 98,000 (81.2%)

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Still not king.

It stinks not to be king.

King agrees.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I thought I was the only one who keeps expecting Steven Spielberg to call the family's writerly elements...

[gjules.livejournal.com]

OK -- I'm curious. Were you considered the responsible parties for the release, or was the prior owner of your land? Does Maine have funding programs for the clean-up? They must not be recommending ongoing monitoring, if they're letting you close the monitoring wells.... (I'm in the environmental sector, but the only work I've done with the State of Maine was while interning with Maine Geological Survey and Maine Emergency Management.)

Ice-cream-stands (and remediation efforts in general) do have a tendency to stick around longer than they're supposed to. Getting a good idea of what's happening below grade is hard, and since it involves borings, it's expensive, too.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Maine has some sort of funds for clean up of catastrophic contamination sites, which this was.

The story, in brief: We live in the house across the street from where Archie's Store used to be. Back when I was doing the reporter thing for the Town Line, one of my interviewees told me that she remembered going out in the buggy with her family and the other families around to watch them blast through the shale to put the gas tanks in at Archie's store; the first gasoline out this way. So.

Archie alas was known for selling beer and not checking IDs, and one night he sold beer to a sixteen-year-old who subsequently wrapped himself and his car around a tree. Under a cloud, Archie closed the store and disappeared like an ayrab into the night.

Leaving the gas tanks, full or near enough, of gas, in the ground.

Fast-forward some number of years. The gore which was once a farm and apple orchard now has a half-dozen houses, with wells, on it. One person turns on the shower of a morning, and the water smells like gas. They call DEP. DEP at first puts a filtering system in the basement, to "take the gas out." And that maintained for several years.

Then we, foolish folk that we are, bought the house. Before we did so, we called DEP and spoke to them about the so-called filtering system in the basement. And because the agency formerly known as Farmers Home Administration holds the mortgage to our house, the FedGov sorta suggested that the DEP had to drill a new well before we could take occupancy and ohbytheway find out what the story was with the gas.

DEP dutifully drilled the well, did some testing and came to the horrified realization that there was LOTS of gas in the water table.

Because of the way the shale which we fondly call "our land" is formed, most of the gas went into the former well on our property. But. If the gas wasn't removed, DEP could kiss six wells bye-bye.

Thus, the test wells, the ice cream stand and fourteen years of, "Let's try this."

The last several rounds of testing showed that the gas has been defeated, for some value of "defeat," the wells on the gore are safe, and DEP can have its cape cleaned and move on to the next site.

[gjules.livejournal.com]

Wow. I figured you were on the actual former gasoline station (or dry cleaners, or whatever, but gas station is the most common reason for remediation of that kind). *winces*

Shale and shallow aquifers are a bad combo (I'm assuming shallow, since it's Maine), and especially when the aquifer in question is used for drinking water. From the sounds of things, if there was that much free product on the water table, the tanks could very well have been leaking while the station was operating.

Congrats on getting the remediation over with!