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BreweryIn5Years t1_jaqzzlr wrote

Reply to comment by TwoNewfies in PSA: Contaminated Gas in Brattleboro by No-Establishment3083

Water is heavier than gas. So there is always water in a storage tank but it’s below the fill pipe. After each delivery usually the tanks get “stuck” to check for water levels. If the water gets close to the fill pipe the computer system should automatically shut the entire station down. There’s a reason you don’t have this happen a lot and you don’t hear about it constantly on the news. Their are multiple redundancies built into the system. Ha being someone come and check for water content therefore usually never results in concrete findings. I go on these calls regularly and never find anything.

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ArkeryStarkery t1_jarfcm3 wrote

Could there be a flaw in the shutdown mechanism?

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BreweryIn5Years t1_jassdek wrote

I mean possibly. Each station has a Veeder Root system that should stop any water from entering the fill pipe to begin with. Then the fuel goes through a filter in the gas pump itself which should stop even small amounts of water (I believe). When a pump is pumping super slow it’s usually the filters need replacing. That particular station has been reported before. An inspector can only check if the issue is still happening not what happened at the exact time of filling. Maybe they called immediately afterwards and had the storage tank pumped out and all the filters replaced, but that may be asking too much of that particular company/ station. All companies pay a lot of money to have both of these things checked and maintained regularly because being out of gas for a couple hours is literally thousands of dollar in profit for them. The only other thing I’ve heard that could possibly affect this is fuel was being delivered/dropped into the fuel tanks at the same time OP was pumping fuel. If there was water it could possibly be pushed around and make its way up to the fill spot at that time. Also sometimes if it’s just rained or snowed there could be a small amount of water making its way to the gas pump nozzle? But all these are very rare and wouldn’t cause 12 vehicles to go down for water. This time of year the simple answer is usually water/condensation getting into the tank from a rain or snowstorm and I’m literally basing this of if a few cars we had in the past that for whatever reason needed some dry gas from time to time, although all the other cars in the parking lot were fine.

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pointedflowers t1_jat8ktu wrote

I’d like to know more and see if it’s different in other states. Must be able to inspect the whole system somehow.

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