SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (ABC 4 News) - Salt Lake City issued a cease and desist order against the downtown Red Lion Hotel to prevent them from pumping any more contaminated water into the city sewer system.
Guests and employees noticed a strong petroleum smell at the Red Lion Hotel on 600 South. State investigators found a leak in an underground storage tank at the Sinclair gas station next door. “It was a gasoline smell that the people in the hotel noticed and called the fire department,” said Utah Department of Environmental Quality Program Manager John Menatti.
Menatti said an unknown amount of gasoline contaminated the ground water beneath the hotel. Like many downtown buildings, the Red Lion pumps the excess ground water into the city sewer system. The ground water contamination caused an environmental and safety hazard.
“The vapors would work their way into a building and then [could] get ignited… so you have explosions,” said Salt Lake City Public Utility Director Jeff Niermeyer. “Workers safety [is at risk because] they go down and work in a sewer – they could get overcome with the fumes.”
Instead of pumping excess ground water into the sewer, crews hired by the Red Lion now have to pump the water into two huge storage tanks and then haul the contaminated water to a treatment facility.
Hazardous materials crews think they have identified the source of the leak and stopped it. Now the State of Utah will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to dig up and remove the leaking underground storage tank and clean up all the contaminated material at the hotel.
“They have taken care of the vapors and there is no ground water wells where people would be drinking the ground water down there. So, currently there is no public health issue,” said Menatti.
Hazardous-materials investigators don't know now long it will take to clean up and remove all of the contamination at the Red Lion. They said sensitive noses helped them act quickly to prevent more gasoline from leaking into the water beneath the buildings in downtown Salt Lake City.
The Utah Department of Environmental Quality has identified about 500 other leaking underground storage tanks in the state.
