Gas leak aftermath has Gunnison reeling — and seeking answers
The leak directly or indirectly caused several commercial shops to go out of business and now threatens to pollute a river that runs through the city.
The city is also taking aim at Top Stop — a subsidiary of Wind River Petroleum, which is half-owned by former Salt Lake City mayoral candidate Keith Christensen — Top Stop's environmental consultant Wasatch Environmental and even the state to some extent, for allegedly downplaying the situation and withholding information.
This week the city hired an environmental consultant to provide information about the gas leak and its cleanup, independent of Wasatch Environmental and the state's Department of Environmental Quality.
Top Stop has not responded to repeated calls for comment.
"I'm so infuriated at this process, at this 'Let's keep it on the down low,"' said Gunnison City Council member Lori Nay on Thursday.
The gas leak became news Aug. 10, when local and state officials ordered the evacuation of an entire Main Street block— the block heaviest populated with businesses — because of fumes from gas that had leaked from Top Stop's underground storage tanks.
Since August, however, six businesses, including Top Stop, have closed their doors for good, among them the dress shop, Lila Lee Apparel. Most businesses cited the gas leak as the reason.
Then, last Wednesday, resident Jeremy Taylor and his family were forced to evacuate their home because of elevated levels of gas fumes four blocks away from the spill site. In the direction of that migration and only a couple of hundred feet from Taylor's home runs the Sanpitch River, which empties into Yuba Reservoir.
Taylor is the son of Rod Taylor, another City Council member.
That night, the City Council hired an environmental consultant to provide information independent of that provided by Wasatch Environmental, which is hired by Top Stop and which provides the information the state uses in its oversight of the cleanup.
"Their whole mission is to minimize it because they only have $1 million, and they know (the cleanup) is going to go way over that," Nay said.
The $1 million she referred to is from a cleanup fund, called the Petroleum Storage Tank Fund, or PST, administered by the state Department of Environmental Quality that companies can tap into to recoup cleanup and remediation costs, after a $10,000 deductible.
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