Fuel leak leads to fine for Petaluma Valero owner

The owner of a Petaluma gas station is on the hook for nearly $50,000 in fines after the station’s fuel storage tanks leaked, threatening local groundwater supplies.|

The owner of a Petaluma gas station is on the hook for nearly $50,000 in fines after the station’s fuel storage tanks leaked, threatening local groundwater supplies.

In December 2013, the Petaluma Fire Department did its annual inspection at the Valero gas station on East Washington Street. After detecting a number of violations, firefighters learned that the owner, Arash Salkhi, had failed to keep the required records on the station’s fueling tanks. By law, gas station owners must have a variety of systems in place to protect groundwater from fuel leaks, and are required to keep records of their monitoring of the tanks.

The fire department determined that the alarm that is supposed to trigger when a tank begins to leak was not functioning, and the tanks had been leaking fuel for an unknown amount of time. Salkhi also failed to test the station’s secondary confinement system, which is required to protect groundwater from fuel leaks.

After shutting down the station, the department handed the case over to the Environmental and Consumer Law Division of the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office, which filed a civil environmental enforcement case against Salkhi.

As part of the resolution to that case, Salkhi agreed to pay $49,545.40 in penalties and to cover investigation costs. Of that, $22,500 will go to the Petaluma Fire Department, some of which will be spent training staff on how to monitor underground fuel storage tanks. The District Attorney’s Office will get the rest of the funds, $14,454.40, to reimburse the costs of investigating this case.

“We intend to take every step possible to protect Sonoma County’s precious water resources with vigorous enforcement of our underground storage tank laws,” District Attorney Jill Ravitch said in a news release.

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