IT'S NOT A SINKHOLE AT EXXON, JUST A CHANGE OF TANKS

(Ed.s Note: We were passing by the Exxon convenience store at the corner of Price and Old Alice roads and noticed a huge hole where the gas pumps used to be. The pumps are still there, of course, but the tanks underneath were not. We stopped and asked the contractor doing the digging what they were doing and he said the tanks had outlived their life span and had to be replaced before they started leaking gasoline and diesel into the ground water.

He said the old tanks had already been removed and that they were prepping the ground to lay in the new ones. In the past, before the federal and state government burdensome regulations forced the gasoline companies to periodically replace tanks to prevent the contamination of the water table. A technician taking ground samples said the tanks there had been removed in time and that the soil samples he took did not show any signs of contamination. The workers were on the jobs as was the guard dog on the lower right side of the photo who was sleeping through the racket made by the crane and the small dozer in the hole. Notice the layers of different soils on the sides of the hole.)