A leak at a CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) gasoline station on Green Island (綠島) has polluted the nearby groundwater supply, where the benzene concentration soared to 294 times the allowable limit, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
The station on Aug. 10 notified CPC management that a pump had leaked 3,700 liters of gasoline, almost a month after it confirmed the incident on July 14, CPC said in a statement on Sunday.
EPA officials last month drilled three wells around the pump to collect groundwater samples for testing, said EPA Soil and Groundwater Remediation Fund Management Board executive secretary Chen Shyh-wei (陳世偉), who published the test results yesterday.
Photo: Chen Hsien-yi, Taipei Times
The samples collected from the well 4m to 5m from the pump turned up a benzene concentration of 14.7 milligrams per liter (mg/L), or 294 times the maximum allowable level of 0.05 mg/L, EPA data showed.
The concentration of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) reached 46.5mg/L, higher than the maximum permissible level of 1mg/L, while that of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) reached 124mg/L, exceeding the maximum allowable level of 10mg/L, the data showed.
Toluene and naphthalene residues reached 27.5mg/L and 0.764mg/L respectively, both exceeding their legal limits of 10mg/L and 0.4mg/L, the EPA said.
The samples taken from the well about 1m to 2m from the pump also turned up concentrations of benzene, naphthalene, MTBE and TPH in excess of maximum allowable limits, while those taken from the well about 12m from the pump were within safe levels, the data showed.
The Taitung Environmental Protection Bureau on Sunday fined CPC NT$15,000 for failing to report the leak promptly, saying it should have reported it within three hours of its discovery as stipulated in Article 28 of the Water Pollution Control Act (水污染防治法).
The company would also be fined between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000 for contravening Article 41 of the Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act (土壤及地下水污染整治法), Chen said, adding that the bureau would decide on the amount.
The station would be identified as a pollution control site and CPC would be required to propose a remediation plan within six months, detailing how it would redress the water pollution and prevent similar leaks, Chen added.
The incident dealt a fresh blow to state-run CPC’s reputation, after media reports on July 16 that 63,000 liters of oil had leaked from its depot in Penghu County a year earlier.
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