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Gas Station Measure Goes Forward

Posted on: Saturday, 20 May 2006, 06:02 CDT

By Mike Joseph, The Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.

May 20--COLLEGE TOWNSHIP -- Council decided Thursday to advance a proposal that would ban gas stations within 1,000 feet of waterways even though its Planning Commission dislikes the regulation.

The proposed ordinance was prompted by a gasoline leak that was discovered two months ago at a Sheetz gas station on East College Avenue at Pike Street next to Spring Creek. The leak is now the object of a cleanup operation.

A public advertisement of the ordinance Thursday established the ban as the prevailing regulation that would apply in case Sheetz or anyone else were to give the township a new land-use plan for a gas station, township officials said.

On Wednesday, Sheetz officials told the Planning Commission that the company is considering building a new convenience store and gas station at 1830 S. Atherton St., site of the former South Ridge Motor Inn, but has not yet submitted a plan.

The entire South Atherton Street location is less than 1,000 feet from Slab Cabin Run, a Spring Creek tributary, and would come within the jurisdiction of the proposed ordinance, Centre Regional planner Mark Holdren said.

Adam Brumbaugh, College Township manager, said the purpose of the ordinance is to protect streams, well heads and wetlands from contamination, not to prevent Sheetz or any other company from building a convenience store with gasoline at the site.

"It's clearly and solely an environmental issue," Brumbaugh said.

Council will conduct a public hearing on the "automobile service station ordinance" ordinance at its next meeting, June 1, and could vote to enact the measure at the same meeting.

The Planning Commission voted 4-0 with one abstention Wednesday to recommend that council reject the proposal. The majority agreed the scope of the ordinance is too narrow, the 1,000-foot buffer too arbitrary a distance, and technical protections too easily dismissed as possibly eliminating the need for the distance-based precaution.

The recommendation came after Sheetz officials argued against the proposal.

Since 2001, the Sheetz officials said, the company has built all of its gas stations with precautions that include double-walled pipes and storage tanks and catch basins underneath connecting points, together with a leak-detection system that alerts store personnel.

"We've not had a release (leak) from these types of systems," Sheetz environmental manager David Dodson said.

Those protections were not used when the Pike Street store was built in 1987, the Sheetz officials said, adding that they did not know whether the Pike Street store would now be retrofitted to incorporate more advanced technology.

On Thursday, council told staff to research an additional ordinance that might require technological protections and might apply to storage tanks and potentially contaminating substances in general, but refused to abandon the idea of safety in distance.

"You really don't want a gas station right on top of a stream,' Holdren said.

"I appreciate the increased standards now," Councilman David Wasson said. "I wish we had them before."

Mike Joseph can be reached at 235-3910.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.

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Source: Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.)

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