Sacramento wants to clean up two toxic sites contaminated by gas stations decades ago
The Sacramento City Council signed off on a $750,000 agreement to assess and begin cleaning up the toxic sites left by two gas stations at a Del Paso Heights intersection.
Sacramento has identified “volatile organic compounds” on the now-city-owned lots that sit on the north- and southwest corners of Marysville Boulevard and Grand Avenue. Such compounds can vaporize in the air and cause harmful health effects.
The Greater Sacramento Urban League owns adjacent property, where it wants to build housing.
The funds to improve the sites come from an Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Program grant. The program helps address contamination by “hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants,” including petroleum.
Documents state that the city won the federal grant in April 2023, and Sacramento’s Office of Innovation and Economic Development began soliciting environmental consultants to perform the work in September 2024, almost a year and a half later. Geocon Consultants won the contract.
The EPA has published a description of the lot on the southwest corner of the intersection. It had been a gas station “since at least the early (1950s),” complete with underground storage tanks. In May 2005, the site’s building and other features were demolished, and the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency acquired the property.
Before that property at 3739 Marysville Boulevard was sold to the housing agency, an underground storage tank leak prompted the county to open a case over petroleum hydrocarbon contamination in 1999. All told, the state said, 32,000 pounds of petroleum hydrocarbons were removed.
After that county case over the petroleum hydrocarbon contamination was closed in 2014, the California State Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board took over because groundwater at the site was contaminated. Regulators looking at the water found trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene or PCE, possibly from the dry cleaner that operated next door until 1980. The EPA says that PCE causes a host of severe health problems and believes it is also carcinogenic.
A Shell station previously sat on the northwest corner of the intersection, at 3801 Marysville Boulevard. That facility was built in 1976, according to records maintained by the State Water Resources Control Board. The underground storage tanks were removed in 1989. A remedial action plan was undertaken, and it was deemed adequate at the time.
Three and a half decades later, the site is still contaminated.
Concerns over generational toxic pollution have been raised in discussions over proposed new gas stations in the city. One such dispute — in which the city rejected developer Paul Petrovich’s request to build a new gas station in Curtis Park — ultimately led the city to agree to a $26 million settlement for not giving him a fair hearing. Petrovich said that Sacramento’s denial of the gas station permit had a severe negative impact on his business, his reputation, his family and his health.
This story was originally published January 21, 2025 at 6:10 PM.
