As wind and rain began to pound West Marin two weeks
ago, downtown Bolinas was engulfed in a powerful odor of gasoline whose
origins have not yet been determined.
The "extremely strong odor" was first reported
to the Bolinas fire department on Wednesday, Dec. 28, Bolinas fire chief
Anita Tyrrell-Brown said. It was traced to a storm drain in front of
the Bolinas Library.
Every drain between the library and the Bolinas Lagoon
also smelled strongly of fuel, Tyrrell-Brown said, though there was
no visible trace of gasoline.
"We made no determination where the gas was coming
from," Tyrrell-Brown said.
Firefighters placed booms around the storm drain’s
outlet into the lagoon, Tyrrell-Brown said, to block any spilled gasoline.
She said that only once, on New Year’s Eve, had she noticed any
trace of gasoline in the lagoon, some "small rainbow bubbles coming
up to the surface and dissipating" within the boomed-off area.
"It was not like a big slick of gas or anything," she said.
On New Year’s Eve, Tyrrell-Brown said, when she
was walking in downtown Bolinas with her family, the odor of gasoline
was "overwhelming."
The odor "would come and go" over the next
week and was last reported rising from the drain where it was first
noticed, in front of the Bolinas Library, on Wednesday, Jan. 4, Tyrrell-Brown
said. Since then, the odor has disappeared.
Gas station tanks not leaking
Jeff Rawles, Deputy Director for the Marin Department
of Public Works, said that inspectors had ruled out the underground
tanks of the gas station in downtown Bolinas as a source of the fumes.
"[Inspectors] found no leaks in the tanks," Rawles said. "We
think the gas station’s probably okay."
Gail Reitano, administrative director for the Bolinas
Community Land Trust, which runs the station, confirmed that the tanks
had been checked and no leaks were detected, despite rumors in Bolinas
to the contrary.
"It didn’t come from us," Reitano said.
"Whenever you smell gas in the town, and there’s one gas station,
guess who the finger gets pointed at."
Possible sources
The gas station was closed last week not because of
any leakage but to prevent damage to equipment from rising groundwater,
Land Trust president Richard Pfeffer said. It reopened Monday, when
a technician traveled to Bolinas to restart the station’s operating
system.
Possible sources of the odor could include pockets
of contaminated soil opened in the rain, Tyrrell-Brown said, or leaking
gasoline from an automobile. Someone also may have simply dumped gasoline
into a storm drain.
The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control
Board is launching an investigation into the source of the gasoline
odor, Rawles said.