By
9:30 Wednesday,
February 7, Travis County District Judge Joe Hart’s courtroom was deserted. The
jury had been dismissed. No lawyers, clerks, or judges were in sight. More than
a dozen maps, showing pollution plumes, pipelines, and tank locations, lay
against a wall. Two dozen boxes of documents and exhibits were nearby. They
were the last visible remnants of a case known as Phillip Gutierrez et al.
v. Mobil Oil Corporation et al. The case, which was expected to last
several more weeks, was settled out of court and the lawyers, plaintiffs, and
jurors had gone home.
The Gutierrez case was part of a spate of legal claims brought against oil
companies who operated petroleum storage facilities in East Austin. Coastal
States Crude Gathering Company, the last remaining defendant in the case, had
agreed to settle out of court. And while Coastal’s decision ends most of the
litigation involving the tank farms, the battle over one of the largest tracts
of open space in East Austin is just beginning.
The tank farm battle started more than five years ago, when nearby residents
began complaining that they were suffering from a variety of health problems
due to their proximity to the storage tanks. In 1992, a group of citizens filed
suit against six oil companies — Exxon, Chevron, Texaco, Mobil, Star
Enterprises, and Coastal — alleging that their property values and health had
been hurt by the location and operation of the tank farms.
Last month, five of the companies agreed to settle the case. The terms of the
settlements have not been disclosed. Robert Kizer, lead attorney for the
plaintiffs, said the final details of the settlement had not been reached, but
would be made available within the next month or so. Frank Oliver, an attorney
who represents Coastal, refused to discuss the case.
While the 170 plaintiffs in the lawsuit will likely get several thousand
dollars each, the neighborhoods around the tank farms remain in a quandary:
What should be done with 52 acres of land that used to hold millions of gallons
of refined petroleum products? Susanna Almanza of PODER (People Organized In
Defense of Earth and her Resources), the group which led the fight to force the
shutdown of the tank farms, says discussions about future uses of the land have
already begun. She said that it would be ideal for parks, a health clinic, a
grocery store, or a school. “We are doing a survey which we hope to complete
pretty soon,” she said.
Even if PODER comes up with a viable use for the land, a number of obstacles
stand in the way. Foremost among them: the cleanup on the land has not been
completed, and the land is still owned by the oil companies.
Buster Capuchino, the director of the Greater East Austin Youth League, which
sponsors baseball, football, and basketball teams for Hispanic youngsters, says
the neighborhoods around the tank farm need more ball fields. His group relies
on ball fields on Town Lake near Fiesta Gardens. The Govalle Recreation Center
provides some sports facilities for children who live around the tank farms,
but Capuchino said Govalle isn’t big enough. “The kids are there, but they
don’t have a program like ours,” said Capuchino, who also wondered if the land
would be safe. “The soil tests would have to be done and that could take a long
time.”
Neal Miller, a spokesman for Chevron, says no one has broached the subject of
alternative uses of the tank farm property with his company. “Nobody has been
to see us about it, no neighborhood groups or anyone else,” Miller said. He
added that Chevron, which owns about three acres of land, is willing to
entertain ideas about future use of the property, which holds a warehouse and a
small office building.
Miller said that Chevron has completed much of their cleanup, and that most of
the tanks have been dismantled and removed. But while Chevron may be nearly
finished with their cleanup, the other companies still have a long way to go.
Under the supervision of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission
(TNRCC), the oil companies are pumping groundwater from beneath the tank farm
and removing the hydrocarbons, which may include benzene, toluene, xylene, and
other materials. The water is then put into the sanitary sewer so it is treated
again at the city’s wastewater treatment plant before being released into the
Colorado River. The companies are also cleaning the contaminated soil through
vapor extraction and a technique called air sparging, which pumps air into the
soil.
Regardless of how the cleanup is done, some neighbors believe the land should
be left idle. “I think they should just leave it like that,” says John Vela,
who rents a house on Alf Street that abuts the tank farm property. “If it’s bad
land, it’s bad land.”
Benny Guerra, Jr., whose mother, Beatrice Guerra, lives at 1103 Saucedo and
was a plaintiff in the case against the oil companies, agrees that the land
should be left vacant. “When it rains real hard, the water flows off of that
land and sits here in the gutter for days,” said Guerra, gesturing toward the
fence that separates his mother’s yard from the tank farm property. “And you
can see the gasoline and chemicals in the water; it just sits right on top of
the water. It’s too dangerous for a park. They should just leave the gates
closed and leave it alone.”
Whatever the neighborhood decides to do with the land, it may be another
decade before anything happens to it. In a December memo on the project, Pat
Bobeck of the TNRCC said, “the cleanup will most likely continue for another
five to 10 years.”
It took nearly five years for the people who live around the tank farms to get
their day in court. Perhaps it’s not unreasonable for them to wait another five
years before the land that used to hold the tank farms has a chance to become
useful again. But the land is one of the largest undeveloped tracts in Central
Austin. Like Mueller Airport, which is scheduled to close in 1998, the tank
farm land, if developed, could be worth millions of dollars.
Kizer, the plaintiff’s attorney, believes the land should be made into a park.
Kizer said it “should be given back to the community. The lawsuits were about
the community… Now that they’ve been settled, it needs to be given back to
the public as a sign by the oil companies and the city that these people were
harmed and now they have an area for their benefit.”
This article appears in February 23 • 1996 and February 23 • 1996 (Cover).