UPDATE: DNR Gives Citgo about a Month to Design Plan Addressing Fuel Leak

In a meeting Thursday morning, state Department of Natural Resources officials gave the owner of Shorewood’s Citgo station a little over a month to hire a consultant and come up with a plan to address fuel contaminating soil near his station.

John Hnat, the DNR program manager assigned to the case, said the owner, Syed Rizvi of Glendale, must hire a consultant by Oct. 24 and have a plan lined up by Nov. 14.

If DNR officials are satisfied with the plan, the consultant will perform tests to pinpoint the actual source of the problem near the station.

"The consultant will look for the source through a variety of tests, and hopefully remediation can follow," Hnat said.

The station will pay for any consultant or other fees Hnat said.

Hnat said officials' working theory is there are two tanks transferring fuel under the station and one of the tanks were full, and potentially overflowed.

Syed says he hasn’t lost a single drop of fuel from his station and contends he’s not responsible for the gasoline leak that has had fire officials scrambling for answers for nearly a week.

"There is no gas, no gas smell, so gas is not coming out of this store. They are wrong," Syed told Patch media partner FOX6.

DNR officials pegged the station as the source of a gasoline leak in Shorewood's sanitary sewer system Wednesday and ordered a conference with Syed to discuss how he plans to cleanup the spill.

A busy Syed prepared for a 10 a.m. meeting Thursday with the DNR and declined an interview with Shorewood Patch, but his wife Safia Rizvi said they plan to comply with the DNR's requests.

“We will do whatever the DNR asks,” she said. “But, we don’t have leaky tanks. We don’t know what the problem is.”

Citgo's convenience store is still open but Safia said they are ready to put the episode behind them as they are losing thousands of dollars in gasoline sales each day.

The station has been closed since Oct. 5, when fire officials started investigating gasoline fumes in Shorewood’s sanitary sewer system, and samples lead them to the station.

A couple days later, state officials stepped in and red-tagged the station’s fuel pumps.

North Shore Fire Department Chief Robert Whitaker said the station has a history of fuel contamination problems dating back to 1994 according to DNR records.

Safia said, however, there was no problem in 1994 and that they have never had a fuel spill. The DNR didn't deem the contamination to be to levels warranting remediation, Whitaker said.

Whitaker said laboratory results from soil samples taken Friday prove a fuel contamination in the parkway in front of Citgo happened as recent as a week ago.