ORLAND – An investigator from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection was in town Tuesday checking two wells for traces of gasoline that may have leaked from former tanks at the Department of Transportation garage more than a dozen years ago.

In 1989, the department removed three underground fuel tanks – two diesel and one gasoline – from the DOT garage, according to Bob Whittier, a DEP oil and hazardous materials specialist. At that time, officials found some gasoline contamination in the soil, he said.

Inspectors found no leaks in the gasoline tank that was removed, and the contamination may have come from previous accidental leaks or overfills at the site, he said. Although some soil was removed from the site at that time, Whittier said, the DEP’s rules did not require that a complete site assessment be conducted. That would have involved a detailed review and assessment of the site by a geologist.

DEP officials came across the brief report about the leak during an investigation into a recent incident involving the dumping of wastewater in a collection tank from one bay of the DOT garage onto the ground, Whittier said.

“As a precaution, we decided to check the wells to see if we could detect any gasoline,” he said.

Whittier took samples from just two home wells, one located next to the garage, the other across the Gilpen Road from the facility. The samples will be forwarded to the state laboratory in Augusta. Results from the tests are expected within about two weeks, he said.

Those results will determine what future action, if any, the department will take.

Meanwhile, DOT officials have completed a review of the incident last month in which the wastewater was dumped on the ground. That review determined that the wastewater did contain small amounts of contamination.

“Very low levels of petroleum-related material was found in the water in the tank,” said Dwight Doughty, a hydrogeologist with the DOT’s Office of Environmental Services. “We’re discussing with the DEP to do some type of corrective action.”

That corrective action may involve removing some contaminated soil from the site.

Doughty stressed that the levels of petroleum found in the tank were very small.

“We’re talking in the parts per billion range,” he said.

The tank collected water from one bay at the DOT garage. That bay was not one in which any maintenance work was done, Doughty said.

The department’s review also confirmed that a former drain in a bay where maintenance work is done, had been filled with cement several years ago and that no waste water from that bay was running into the collection tank.

DOT officials estimated that approximately 2,500 gallons of wastewater had been dumped from the tank onto the ground.