Source: http://www.kshb.com, June 25, 2015
By: Melissa Yeager

Leaky tank first discovered in 2006

Near 31st and Cleveland, Willie Gaston spends his summer days outside his home. He’s periodically had to evacuate and move to a hotel due to a strong smell of gasoline permeating the air inside his home.
“It hurts your eyes and just have to mainly go to hotels at night, but we are in the yard during the day,” Gaston said.
Just up the street, his neighbor, Mark Murphy, hasn’t had to evacuate, but he has smelled gasoline in his home from time to time.
“I smelled gas outside and also I smelled it in my basement at times,” Murphy said.
Murphy had no idea what it was until he saw pumper trucks across the street. He asked what they were doing, and the workers said they were pumping away gas.
Murphy told 41 Action News if he had known that, he never would have bought a home in this neighborhood.
Tiarra Dixon told us the same thing. Just two years ago, she purchased a building on the corner of 31st and Cleveland to fulfill her dream of opening a restaurant. As she and her husband Brandon started construction, they started getting thick gasoline fumes. The workers refused to continue construction.
“I am afraid,” Dixon said about her hesitation to open.
Where are the fumes coming from?
All three residents say they know the gasoline fumes are coming from a nearby underground storage tank leak from a nearby gas station. According to documents 41 Action News obtained from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, the state agency first discovered the problem in 2006.
However, documents provided by the state regulatory agency do not detail exactly how the tank started leaking, how much might have leaked, or how long they estimate it has been going on.
A private contractor has been hired by the owner of the gas station to do cleanup. The state agency does not believe any currently operational tanks are leaking.
Neighbors believe the leak is coming from an unused tank from the 1950s, however DNR has so far been unable to provide information verifying if that is the source of the leak.
The neighbors are frustrated by a lack of urgency and information.
“It’s worrisome to wonder…what if this thing goes up? What if it blows up? What if something happens and it goes up? This whole block will go up,” Murphy said. “So that my concern not just for myself but other people in the community. Taxpayers. We shouldn’t be treated like this. Something needs to be done.”
Apex, the contractor hired to respond to the leak, has been pumping gasoline from wells created after the 2006 spill. The Kansas City Water Department has also flushed out the sewers. Water Department technicians did put a camera in the sewer and did not find any cracks or leaks. They believe the fumes are getting in from floor drains in people’s homes and from holes in manhole covers.
The Department of Natural Resources does have a spill hotline manned 24 hours a day. The number for that hotline is 573-634-2436.