Former gas station work part of ongoing remediation

Workers from engineering firm Tetra Tech have been at work this past week at the corner of Missoula Avenue and 3rd Street in Troy, at the former location of the Troy Service Station.

Dean Kinney, an environmental project officer with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality said that the current work is a part of the ongoing remediation at the location, which previously was a gas station.

The crew with the drilling rigs this past week have been working to install a soil vapor extraction system, he said.

“This has been an ongoing process,” Kinney said. There is nothing new about contamination at the site.

However, the installation of the system will “enhance remediation,” he said.

“The SVE system will pull out vapors in the subsurface, which will eventually reduce the dissolve phase of the groundwater contamination,” he said.

According to the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, soil vapor extraction uses vacuum pressure to remove volatile and some semi-volatile contaminants from the soil. The gas leaving the soil may be treated or destroyed, depending on local and state air discharge regulations.

Don May with Tetra Tech projected drilling at the site would be completed by Thursday (yesterday), in which case they would run tests today.