By
SHERRY HALBROOKAll summer long, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and tourists from all over the world have enjoyed visiting the 178 state parks and 35 historic sites operated by the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (ORPHS).
The parks are, for many visitors, the ultimate celebration of all that is green, fresh and natural.
Balancing their pristine beauty and environmental integrity with accessibility and comfort for thousands of visitors is a challenge faced daily by the approximately 50 PEF members who are park engineers and technicians at ORPHS.
They ensure the facilities and infrastructure at the more than 200 state parks, boat launches and marinas meet all of the local, state and national building codes and regulations and comply with all of the ever-expanding planning and emergency preparedness requirements to protect the public and the environment.
For more than a year, many of the engineers have been completing plans for how to prevent and cope with petroleum spills. These new plans — called Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) plans — are a federal requirement aimed at preventing and minimizing ground and water pollution.
A detailed, site-specific plan must be developed for almost every petroleum and liquefied propane storage facility at the parks. The underground tanks are especially susceptible to corrosion. While the above-ground tanks are vulnerable to cracks from temperature changes and damage from being struck by vehicles or other objects. Over-filling the tanks can also cause spills.
PROTECTING PARKS — An 8,000 gallon underground fuel tank is removed, at left, at the Planting Field Arboretum in Oyster Bay for replacement by natural gas lines. Above, PEF members William Stumpel and Bruce Walter and supervisor Chris Moore record diesel fuel levels at a park on Long Island. — Photos by William Stumpel and Jonathan Gittens
“It’s about a 15-page plan, said Jon Wegrzynowski, a park engineer in the Niagara Region and former assistant council leader of PEF Division 219. “They show what we are doing to prevent spills, they map the direction the flow would go in if there were a spill, and the countermeasures we take to stop it and clean it up. The plans also list the emergency-response phone numbers to call in case of an incident.”
Wegrzynowski said he has completed and delivered the plans for 10 parks.
Among the unusual challenges he faces in the Niagara Region are the country’s oldest park — Niagara Falls Park, which was established in 1885 as the Niagara Reservation State Park; and Fort Niagara State Park — a former military base that had 20 below-ground storage tanks.
“The below-ground tanks are the ones you have to fear, because you can’t see what’s going on,” he said. “We’ve removed about 90 percent of those tanks,” Wegrzynowski said, “and we will soon remove the rest of them.”
Among the many precautions to prevent leaks are double walls in the tanks with multiple layers of protection. The tanks are inspected monthly, with close monitoring of the amounts of fuel in the tanks and how much is added and removed. Probes with sensors penetrate a dry, barrier space between tank inner and outer walls, and send alarm signals if they detect fluid in the dry space. Above-ground tanks have internal catch basins to trap any overflow when the tanks are refilled.
“We have more than 200 fuel oil, gasoline, diesel and kerosene tanks at 22 of the 33 parks in the Long Island Region,” said PEF member Bill Stumpel who was an engineer for the state Office of General Services for 13 years before taking the job of park engineer at ORPHS.
Stumpel said they are converting from oil to natural gas in some cases, which eliminates the need for storage tanks.
He said the Long Island region will not go entirely to above-ground tanks because they can be too unsightly for certain locations where preserving the natural beauty is a primary concern. With so many miles of ocean- front beaches and shoreline, underwater fuel lines for marinas and boat launches are also a concern that requires constant monitoring and maintenance.
Stumpel said he and park engineer Bruce Walter have been working for several years to replace older storage tanks with newer, more environmentally friendly ones.
“Maintaining and replacing them costs a lot less than cleaning up spills,” Stumpel said.