FARMINGTON — The town sent the Valero station on Farmington Avenue multiple emails asking to schedule an inspection and got no answer. So on Friday, Oct. 16, town staff stopped in at the store. The operator called back that afternoon.
Staff inspected the station Monday, Oct. 19, and called the problems "pretty small" and the store "very clean." On Tuesday night, Oct. 20, the town's Aquifer Protection Agency renewed the station's registration, which lets it keep storing and pumping gas over ground that feeds public wells, with four fixes due by Friday, Nov. 20.
That leaves one business in Farmington's five-year checkup of the properties over its public drinking-water supplies. With the Valero, Dunning Sand & Gravel on Brickyard Road and H&H Refrigeration on New Britain Avenue renewed Tuesday, 14 of the 15 registrations on file are done. The last, The Cardinals, a turf-supply distributor on River Road, comes back Monday, Nov. 9, after a commissioner said he was not comfortable approving it until it filed a more complete list of what it stores.
Businesses that store or handle hazardous materials inside the town's aquifer protection areas have to re-register every five years and show how they keep oil and chemicals out of the water. The agency, whose members also sit as the Town Plan and Zoning Commission, renewed five on Sept. 29 and six on Oct. 14. Each of Tuesday's three approvals was moved by Commissioner David St. Germain, seconded by Commissioner Josh Davidson and passed unanimously, according to the minutes.
Approved Tuesday
- Getty CT Leasing LLC, 1387 Farmington Avenue, the Valero station. Between the call and the inspection, staff said, the store put the motor oil and other automotive fluids it sells on secondary containment, a tub or pallet that catches leaks. The underground tanks were replaced in 2017 with double-walled tanks with spill alarms, staff said. The four fixes due Nov. 20: containment for the drum, now kept on pavement under a tarp, that holds what is pumped out of the spill buckets, the small sumps under the fill-port lids that catch spills when a tanker fills the underground tanks; labels at the pumps telling customers to notify the attendant of a spill; absorbent booms in the spill kit; and a corrected plan that names the current manager instead of a former one, lists oil and other regulated items sold in the store, and adds Connecticut Water, the utility, to the emergency contacts. Staff said the store is run by the same man who asked the town in September to let it sell beer.
- Dunning Sand & Gravel, 105 to 163 Brickyard Road. Continued from Oct. 14 so commissioners could read the company's updated plans. Still due: more containment for fluids, including items in a shipping container north of the maintenance building, and the fueling canopy, both by Saturday, Oct. 31; unused equipment moved onto pavement or drained of its fluids by Dec. 31; and corrections to the company's stormwater pollution prevention plan, which maps where rain runs off the property and how that water is kept clean. The spill kit due Oct. 23 is already in place, Assistant Town Planner Garrett Daigle, the agency's agent, said.
- H&H Refrigeration, 1814 New Britain Avenue, renewed as an inactive use, for salvage only. Details below.
The Cardinals, still waiting
The Cardinals stores seed, fertilizer and other supplies for golf courses and athletic fields at 166 River Road and sells them wholesale. It applies nothing on site, staff said, and has three employees.
Since Oct. 14, the company has sent its list of everything it stores, though some items on the printout showed no quantity. Daigle said he went through the safety data sheets for every item, and that about a third of the materials on site need secondary containment. Staff also found batteries and tires stored outdoors on part of the property leased by the neighbor at 170 River Road, Marsh Holdings, LLC, whose owners build cell towers, Town Planner Shannon Rutherford said. The batteries were cell-tower backup batteries, not car batteries. Staff told the owner, John Callahan, in writing that they must go indoors. Callahan, whose audio did not work on the Zoom line, typed that the company does not store ice melt, has priced containment pallets, and has told Marsh Holdings to remove the batteries and tires.
Commissioner Philip Cordeiro was not ready to vote. "I'm uncomfortable moving forward without a little bit more than here's a list of things," he said.
Davidson said he trusted Daigle's review of what is hazardous. According to the minutes, Davidson also asked for the maximum amount of each item the company keeps, and Cordeiro asked for a plan showing where each item is stored, how it is contained and what happens in a spill. Staff said even a paragraph or a sketch would do, and agreed to work with Callahan before Nov. 9.
Dunning's binder
Davidson said that a couple of months ago he saw water running off a sand pile at Dunning, out a side gate and onto Brickyard Road into a street catch basin. Marc Ciechoski, the site foreman, said the side gates are for emergency access only, and that he cleaned out the catch basins himself, with buckets.
Peter Shea, a principal consultant at SLR Consulting, walked the commission through the company's new materials management plan, the list of what is on site and how it is stored and cleaned up. Until now, Shea said, the pieces were spread across the stormwater plan and the company's mine-safety training. The new plan is one binder, kept up to date by Ciechoski. "The intent is for this to be like a living document," Shea said. Laminated copies of the spill contact list will go in the maintenance building and near the fueling area. Commissioner Lisa Fagan, an alternate seated for an absent member, caught a wrong digit in a phone number on the list, to be fixed before it is laminated.
St. Germain asked whether the town could check in between five-year renewals. Rutherford said annual reviews could be done by email or in person.
H&H Refrigeration's inactive registration
H&H Refrigeration was the last property to be heard in the Johnson Avenue protection area. It was registered in 2016 under M&A Construction for underground fuel storage, fueling and salvage of metal or vehicle parts, transferred to H&H in 2019 and renewed in 2022, staff said. The fuel tanks have since been removed. The business repairs refrigerated milk coolers and dispensers of the kind used in cafeterias, Daigle said, and scraps the ones it cannot fix.
Staff checked with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection on Oct. 19, and the state said the work no longer counts as a salvage operation. So the agency renewed the registration as inactive, for salvage only. Fueling is not preserved.
The registration still matters because, as staff explained it, a property in a protection area with no registered activity has no path to a permit for a new one. Any change from the inactive use has to come back to the agency, and if no regulated activity starts in the next five years, staff said, the registration lapses. Staff will ask the state whether an inactive registration can be renewed again.
What happens next
The Cardinals comes back Nov. 9, when the agency meets the same night as the Town Plan and Zoning Commission. Staff said the conditions of approval are going into a tracking sheet and calendar, with an update for the agency at its December or January meeting. Staff also plans to revisit four or five businesses that told the town they do no regulated activity, probably after the first of the year, and to check in with registrants at least once a year.
Members present Oct. 20 were Chair Liz Sanford, Commissioners Cordeiro, Davidson and St. Germain, and alternates Fagan and Robert Ingvertsen, seated for absent members Peter Zarella and Bob Canto. The meeting ran from 7:03 to 8:48 p.m.
This coverage is supported by Farmington Storage, 155 Scott Swamp Road, the only storage facility in Connecticut with Museum air. 860.777.4001 📦
Jack Beckett has now filed three times on Farmington's aquifer registrations and is down to one registrant and his last clean mug. He has opinions about secondary containment for coffee. ☕
The Farmington Mercury covers the town nobody else is covering: the special meeting about spill buckets, the registration file that turns out to be about your tap water, the police log somebody had to type up. We publish slowly and without apology. Our motto is "Always last to breaking news," and on The Cardinals we are waiting with everyone else. Find us at farmingtonmercury.com and tell your neighbors. #WeAreFarmington 📰