Texaco 211544

This site was a service station. Petroleum from underground storage tanks contaminated some of the soil. The property also has some soil contamination from a neighboring site, SMI Inc. Trust.

We issued a No Further Action Opinion Letter for the Texaco 211544 site on Oct. 5, 2023.

Investigations conducted at the 8701 Greenwood Ave N property confirmed groundwater and most soils at the property meet cleanup standards defined by Washington State’s cleanup law, the Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA). A limited area of soil contamination related to the SMI Inc. Trust site remains on the northern part of the property. This contamination is related to the neighboring SMI Inc. Trust site. The contamination is contained under a soil cap, and there are restrictions on how the property is used.

From Aug. 10–Sept. 8, 2023, we invited public comments on replacing the Restrictive Covenant for this site. We reviewed and considered the comments we received on the new Environmental Covenant. No edits were necessary. Ecology and the property owners, 8701 Greenwood LLC, replaced the July 1996 Restrictive Covenant with a new Environmental Covenant on October 3, 2023. The new covenant requires the owners to keep contamination related to the SMI Inc. Trust site contained. The covenant releases restrictions on the property related to the Texaco 211544 site.

This property was a service station from the 1930s to the early 1990s. Workers removed the service station infrastructure in the mid-1990s. The property was redeveloped with a drugstore around 1997. The drugstore has been vacant since 2017.

Other past uses included:

• A laundry on the central western part of the property in the 1930s.
• A dry-cleaning business on the central eastern part of the property from 1951 to 1955.

SMI Inc. Trust, another contaminated site, is located on the north-adjacent property. The SMI Inc. Trust site is defined by releases from historical auto maintenance operations. Some contamination from the SMI Inc. Trust site extends onto the Texaco property.

Ecology issued a No Further Action (NFA) letter for the site in 1996. The NFA letter required a restrictive covenant on the property to contain contaminated soil and groundwater that remained in place after initial cleanup work.

In 2020, a new owner purchased the property. They contacted Ecology and requested a change in use for the property. We reviewed the request, along with additional soil and groundwater sampling data, through the Voluntary Cleanup Program.

Soil and groundwater investigations

Soil and groundwater data collected from 2020 to 2022 indicated that soil and groundwater on the property met MTCA cleanup standards, with one exception. Soil samples from the north central part of the property contained diesel-range total petroleum hydrocarbons above the levels for unrestricted use allowed by MTCA. Groundwater in this portion of the property is not affected by soil contamination. Based on our understanding of the location of service station infrastructure related to the Texaco 211544 site, we think the contamination in this portion of the property is related to the north-adjacent SMI Inc. Trust site.

2023 Environmental Covenant

Based on our review of the soil and groundwater data, we recommended replacing the 1996 Restrictive Covenant with a new Environmental Covenant. The new covenant makes the following changes to restrictions on the property:

• Restrictions related to the Texaco 211544 site described in the 1996 covenant are released. Soil and groundwater in this part of the property meet cleanup standards.
• Property owners must maintain an asphalt cap over the soil in the northern portion of the property, which is affected by releases from the SMI Inc. Trust site. The owners must inspect the cap annually and repair any damage as soon as possible after they discover it.
• No one may extract groundwater from the property for any purpose, except to study or clean up the contamination.
• Stormwater systems on the property must not allow stormwater to infiltrate through the restricted area on the northern portion of the property.
• The property owner must restrict leases on the property to uses and activities consistent with the covenant. They must notify lessees of the restrictions on the property.