The Seal Beach City Council, which heard resident complaints for years about the stink and pollution from an Arco service station, has declared a monitoring well at a nearby Chevron station a public nuisance.
Translation: work at the well damaged 13th Street and created an emergency requiring immediate repairs.
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The council's vote Monday night authorizes the city manager to approve a repair contract without taking bids (yeah … I know). But the unusual process is necessary, the council maintained, because a public health emergency exists. The Public Works Department closed 13th Street from PCH to Landing Avenue while the situation could be assessed.
On July 15, Atlas Environmental Engineering Inc. workers contracted by the Chevron station's owner, G&M Oil, injected hydrogen peroxide into the groundwater monitoring well, causing the sidewalk to crack and brown liquid to ooze onto 13th Street. Public Works claims the street buckled to the point it could not carry the weight of vehicle traffic.
The city says G&M Oil will be billed for all work the city and city contractors have done and will do to remedy the situation. Estimate price tag: nearly $45,000. Methinks a mark-up on Slim Jims is coming to certain Seal Beach filling station.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.