Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, October 5, 1993                   TAG: 9310050209
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

KEROSENE SPILLED IN TANK FILL-UP MIX-UP

Sand.

"I knew I had trouble," he said.

That trouble was confirmed when he ran to the back of the parking lot at Crown Express Mart on Franklin Road, and saw a dark pall creeping down the creek behind.

"I could see the water foaming," he said.

City firefighters and environmental specialists worked most of Monday trying to contain the spill. Havens said he was given faulty instructions by a store employee on which valve to fill.

The store's management said all tanks at the store are color-coded so mistakes won't happen. They said Havens was told to wait until the store's manager arrived before pumping in the kerosene.

"He didn't want to do that," said Joe Coale, Crown's director of corporate communications. "It seems absurd to me. It appears to be a delivery error."

Coale said the fill caps are color-coordinated to make delivery easy.

"It's Gasoline 101," he said.

Crown officials called in Environmental Options of Roanoke to clean up the spill.

"We're not looking to point fingers right away," Coale said. "Our concerns are to address the environmental and health concerns."

The creek reeked with the smell of kerosene from the store to the makeshift catch basin set up by firefighters using rocks found along the banks of Ore Branch.

They also used large absorbent pads to keep the kerosene at bay until a skimmer arrived to start removing the kerosene.

Cleanup could take several days.

The valve Havens filled led to a monitoring well, which is designed to help store officials keep track of their soil to make sure none of their tanks are leaking.

Even with that, there seems to be a dispute brewing between Crown and Webb Oil Corp., Havens' employer.

John J. Simon, Webb's consultant, said the monitoring well needed a locked cap.

Coale, Crown's spokesman, said, "No way."

All arguments might be settled by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, which says state regulations required the monitoring well's cap to be clearly marked and secured to prevent tampering.