Industrial Petroleum Distributors

Cleanup is complete. We held a comment period for the Industrial Petroleum Distributors site—east side between December 23, 2019 and January 23, 2020. No comments were received, and the site was removed from the Hazardous Sites List.

The Industrial Petroleum cleanup site is on West Bay Drive in Olympia. It includes areas west of West Bay Drive (upland) and east of West Bay Drive (waterfront).

Atlantic Richfield Corporation (ARCO) developed the site as a bulk fuel storage facility in the early 1950s. The facility had eight above-ground storage tanks on the west part of the site. A pipeline carried fuel from barges in Budd Inlet to the tanks. 

In 1977, ARCO sold the property. The new owners leased it and later sold it to Industrial Petroleum Distributors, which stored waste oil there through the early 1990s.

Leaks and spills from the pipeline and tanks contaminated soil and groundwater with petroleum hydrocarbons. Petroleum products have been found on both the upland and waterfront portions of the site.

In 2000, Ecology entered into an agreed order with the owner of Industrial Petroleum Distributors — the Disclaimer Trust created under the Last Will and Testament of John J. O’Connell (called “the Trust”) — to begin cleanup.

The Trust investigated contamination and developed a remedial investigation/feasibility study report and cleanup plan for the part of the site west of West Bay Drive. In 2003, the Trust finished cleaning up that part of the site.

You can read more about this cleanup in the fact sheet and cleanup plans, in the Documents section below.

In fall 2014, we held a public comment period on draft site reports, cleanup plans and an agreed order for cleanup. We have now finalized the agreed order and cleanup plan. You can find the documents and our responses to the comments we received in the Documents section below.

Under the cleanup plan and agreed order, ARCO removed petroleum-contaminated soil on the east side of West Bay Drive.