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Old storage tank found at park site
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET
© St. Petersburg Times, INVERNESS -- Frank DiGiovanni lifted the wooden plank and peered at the earthen hole beneath, where a rusted metal edge poked through the soft, brown dirt. "What you're looking at is the top of a tank that caved in," the Inverness city manager said, reaching through the wooden stakes and orange tape used to keep the public away from Thursday's find. "How deep it goes, nobody knows. What used to be in it, nobody knows." City officials have more questions than answers about the underground storage tank discovered Thursday on N Apopka Avenue, in a grassy field with scattered trees across from the Inverness Police Department. Did the metal tank, found 4 feet below the surface, hold fuel at one time? Could its contents have contaminated part of the 4-acre Carroll property, the northernmost piece of the city's future waterfront linear park? And if there is contamination, who should pay to clean it up? The answers could be weeks or months away. But as the city looks for an environmental subcontractor to sort out those issues, officials said the tank discovery only delays, not derails, their plans to build walkways, park benches and a picnic pavilion on the Nevada-shaped site overlooking Lake Henderson. "The good thing is it happened now," before the city added any of the park accoutrements, administrative management assistant Frank Blackwelder said. "You don't want to disturb what you did or have the double cost of undoing what you've done," he said. Workers unearthed the top of the tank about 8:30 a.m. while digging a trench for an irrigation system for the "liberty tree," a majestic oak the city planned to dedicate at a Nov. 9 ceremony in memory of Colonial patriots. (The ceremony, which would have included a plaque unveiling by the Sons of the American Revolution, has been postponed.) Crews halted their work. City staffers notified City Council members and the Department of Environmental Protection, which will send someone to visit the site, Blackwelder said. While city officials were surprised by the discovery, a 1997 report on the property suggests they shouldn't have been. The inch-thick "environmental site assessment," prepared for the city two months before it closed on the $400,000 property, identifies a "metal-lined underground structure" in the southwest corner of the site, the same area where workers found the tank Thursday. It is unclear what purpose the structure served, although the site was home over the years to Economy Supermarket, the Van Ness Packing House, Carroll's Ready Mix Concrete and possibly a marina. The land is now vacant. Berryman & Henigar, the consulting firm that drafted the report, recommended repairing the crumbling metal structure if it was still in use. If the structure was abandoned, the report said, the tank should be "carefully" excavated and the surrounding soil tested for contamination. City Parks and Recreation director Pati Smith said she did not know whether the structure identified in the report was the same as the tank discovered Thursday. But she said the city looked into all of the recommendations when it received the report in 1997. At any rate, the city will have to deal with the tank now, starting with finding another consultant to determine the size of the structure and the degree of any contamination. The city will also review its purchasing agreement for the property to determine who would be responsible for cleaning the site, if needed, Blackwelder said. In the meantime, Inverness will press forward with the design for the park, which will come before the City Council Nov. 6 for review. "Someday," DiGiovanni said, looking around the Carroll property, "this is going to be a nice park."
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