DUBBO residents can breathe easy when filling up with petrol, despite more than 900 petrol stations and depots possibly leaking fuel into soil and groundwater in NSW.
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Official data from the NSW Auditor-General released late 2011 showed 770 service stations and 176 other petrol sites were actually or potentially contaminated, with many leaking fuel from underground tanks.
One of the worst confirmed cases contained high levels of the cancer-causing agent benzene, which was leaked from a Sydney petrol station.
The petrol companies Caltex, Shell, BP and Mobil have sites located in Dubbo, but none were contaminated.
Groundwater monitoring walls had been installed at the five Caltex Australia Ltd sites in Dubbo located on the corner of Bourke and Erskine Streets, the corner of Fitzroy and Phillip Streets, Windsor Parade, the corner of Brisbane and Cobra Streets and the Woolworths site at Orana Mall.
A Caltex spokesman said groundwater remediation is continuing to occur at the Brisbane and Cobra Street site in accordance with a voluntary management agreement, approved by the Environment Protection Authority (EPA).
The spokesman said service station providers had to notify the EPA, which was part of the Office of Environment and Heritage, if its site posed a significant risk of harm to the community.
“The changes, which came into force in 2009, put an onus on service station operators to notify the department of the potential for contamination or actual contamination at a site,” they said.
The spokesperson said Caltex took the precautionary decision to advise the department that all Caltex-branded sites in NSW fit the revised definition of having “potential” for contamination.
“We’re checking the tanks so we know how much petrol we give, and for how much we sell it for.
“We reconcile that with how much we know to put in the tanks, and that is how we monitor any fuel leakages.”
They said it was their way of detecting any leakages, and to keep a closer watch on things from then on.
The Daily Liberal contacted the Shell Coles Express Service Stations in Dubbo to enquire about their service stations, with no response.
The BP service station on Erskine Street did not have a soil contamination issue, with most of the petrol stored in above-ground tanks.
The Mobil site in Dubbo was also clear of contamination and fuel leakages.