MILFORD. Mass. -- The owner of a now-closed Gibbs Service Station in Milford, Mass., has agreed to pay $200,000 to resolve allegations that he and his companies failed to notify the proper authorities about a 15,000-gallon diesel-fuel leak from an underground tank at the station, according to a report in the Milford Daily News.
The fuel spill contaminated the groundwater and soil, and cleanup is ongoing, Joe Ferson, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), told the newspaper.
Vincent Cuttone, 56, of Concord, Mass., and his two companies, Route 16 Gas Inc. and 16 Gas LLC, will pay $100,000 to the state and $100,000 to the state's Natural Resource Damages Trust under terms of the settlement that Suffolk Superior Court Judge Mitchell Kaplan approved Thursday, according to the report.
Cuttone said he has been in the gas-station business for 32 years and runs "very good operations."
"I know how operations are run and try to do the right thing," he said. "Sometimes it doesn't make a difference in life."
Cuttone will pay for annual environmental audits for the next three years at each gas station he owns, maintain tank monitoring equipment at the stations, and keep himself and his employees trained in the proper operation of the monitoring equipment, spill prevention and reporting, according to the attorney general's office.
Cuttone owns several other gas stations, said Grant Woodman, a spokesman for the attorney general's office.
The DEP launched an investigation when an employee called police in July 2008 to report what was thought to be the theft of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel from one of the station's underground tanks. Data from a tank monitoring system showed several prior discrepancies in fuel levels that, under state fire regulations, should have been reported to the Milford Fire Department months earlier.
The data also indicated diesel fuel was released at about 8 gallons an hour, resulting in about 15,000 gallons of spilled fuel between April 2008 and July 2008.
Companies are required to notify the DEP within two hours of obtaining knowledge of a release of diesel fuel into the soil and groundwater.
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