Eight months after a malfunctioning gasoline nozzle at UTS headquarters released over 50 gallons of diesel fuel into a local waterway, University Parking and Transportation has begun over $300,000 in facility improvements to protect local surface water from industrial pollution.
Additions to the University's Motor Vehicle Maintenance Facility, located on Millmont Street near the Barracks Road shopping center, include canopies over fuel pumps, protective curbing around bus washing areas and oil-water separators in storm water drains.
These improvements are part of a comprehensive Pollution Prevention Plan, developed by the Office of Environmental Health and Safety over the past two years as a University-wide approach addressing ecological issues.
"It's not just us," Parking and Transportation Director Rebecca White said. "It's an effort to improve storm water discharge overall. We have a responsibility to put quality water down these drains."
Currently, a pond and vegetated floodplain are being constructed on the Dell and behind the new Ivy Parking Garage as a way of naturally filtering runoff and retaining excess water, said Jeff Sitler, an environmental compliance manager in the Office of Environmental Health and Safety.
New measures such as these are expected to significantly improve surface water quality, reducing the amount of pollutants that enter local streams and rivers, eventually emptying out into the Chesapeake Bay.
In March of this year, an unattended nozzle at the vehicle maintenance facility spilled over 65 gallons of diesel fuel when it failed to automatically shut off after filling a bus. Cleanup crews were able to recapture 15 gallons at the site, and a combination of absorbents, a floating dam and vacuum trucks were used to remove the remaining 50 gallons from Meadow Creek.
Though the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality later concluded that the incident, which cost the University $5,000 in fuel and cleanup expenditures, was handled satisfactorily, White said revised protocols are in place that prohibit unattended fueling, and new drain covers are available to prevent unwanted chemicals from flowing into a storm drain in case of an accident.
Additionally, an oil-water separator will be installed inside a storm drain at the facility. Sitler said the filter is necessary because past solutions to the problem of oil runoff have been unsuccessful.
Several years ago, drip-pans were placed underneath buses in the parking lot to catch dripping oil and grease. Over time, the pans became damaged by the buses themselves and proved difficult to maintain, Sitler said. Other remedies, such as using kitty litter to absorb oil from water runoff, also proved problematic.
Funding for the filters and other improvements to the Parking and Transportation building will come from expansion and renovation reserve accounts, which is financed by revenue from parking garages, meters and citations.
As part of the construction, fuel pumps will have to be closed off to allow the erection of canopies, which are intended to prevent rainwater from washing away gas and oil that has collected on the ground.
Additionally, a temporary barrier made of rocks and hay has been placed around storm drains in the lot where UTS buses are stored.
A student bus driver, speaking on condition of anonymity, said these obstacles would make it harder to park in and pass through the lot, adding that drivers were not informed of the situation until yesterday.
While acknowledging potential hurdles in the implementation of new environmental measures, Sitler said that the long-term impact of such actions would be beneficial for the entire community.
"It's clear that we're having an impact on surface water," he said. "What we're doing now is going a long way toward improving that."
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