Environmental Impact ??

An older downtown YMCA had the funds and long wanted to expand but it could not because none of the adjacent properties, not even a long closed gas station, had been for sale. Then, one late winter morning, the Y’s director noticed a new “for sale” sign on the gas station. Immediately she phoned the listed number and the Y’s board members, got the ball rolling and within a week they’d purchased the property. Some weeks passed, long drawn up plans were put into action and the ground-breaking took place just as the spring weather arrived. But, not too long into the project, the excavation came to a sudden halt as the crew reported that the bottom of a trench was filling with what appeared and smelled like a mix of stale gasoline and diesel. The obvious conclusion was that there were old, abandoned storage tanks on the site that would require a very expensive environmental cleanup. Consultants and lawyers got involved and, of course, the previous owners of the gas station denied any such thing and suggested that what the construction crew had seen was really nothing more than dirty groundwater filling the hole. “But” protested the Y’s lawyer, referring to a consultant’s report, “The Y’s men say only fuels rush in…..”