Weston selectmen on Thursday, Oct. 15, voted unanimously to move $29,000 from the finished Lyons Plains Road project to pay for soil borings at the town's Public Works Garage, where a heating oil leak from 1989 was never closed out with the state. The transfer still needs Board of Finance approval.
In 1989, an underground tank at the garage leaked heating oil. The town took steps to clean it up, Town Administrator Karl Kilduff wrote in a memo to the Board of Selectmen, but it never closed the case with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. "As a result, the site is still reported as being open," he wrote.
The borings, near the old leak and the tanks there now, are part of a project to take out the town's underground fuel tanks at the garage and the Transfer Station. Kilduff told the board the tanks at the garage would be replaced with tanks above ground.
The town worked on the cleanup through the end of 2000, Kilduff said, bringing in licensed environmental engineers. Back then, the state ran a fund that paid back tank owners for leaks. The state fund later dried up, he said. The town stopped filing reports with the state, and "it's not clear whether we finished and wrapped up the project" in the state's eyes, he said.
Asked what it might cost if a problem turns up, Kilduff said, "That's the point of this exploration." If more cleanup is needed, he said, it would have to meet "2026 standards rather than 2000 standards," at added cost.
The plan is to start the borings as soon as the Board of Finance signs off, before the ground freezes.