MCALLEN - The state is cleaning up a 33-acre underground lake of highly explosive gasoline and natural gas. It’s located in a south McAllen neighborhood.
The chemicals are contaminating groundwater, just 15 feet under more than 200 homes.
Machines are being set up at Beach Avenue and North 23rd Street. They’ll be vacuuming out poisonous chemical around the clock for several days.
A CHANNEL 5 NEWS investigation shed light on the problem last year. State and city officials had been kept it under wraps for more than a decade.
Shortly after our investigation, McAllen was placed on a state cleanup priority list.
“We're going to continue to focus on those sort of things to make sure that people in the neighborhood are safe,” says Ronnie Eason of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
The TCEQ is in charge of the cleanup. This is just the beginning of the process. The entire cleanup is expected to take several years.
