She was light-headed, groggy. The sore throat was constant. So was the headache. Her hands started to shake. At night, Carissa Kuhni would lie in bed sweating, her arms tingling.
Doctors prescribed antidepressants. They injected hormones, figuring she was going through menopause - at 36. When the symptoms persisted, they blamed the mix of medications.
The gas station a few blocks away had already been blamed for the closure of the movie theater and the dress shop. But Kuhni thought the smells were in her head. Then the first benzene reading inside her house came back - 34 micrograms per cubic meter. State guidelines say the risk of developing cancer increases with constant indoor exposure over 8.8 mcg a year.
She moved out - her 7-year-old daughter, the iguana, the dogs and some clothes. Her job taking reservations for Marriott Hotels is on hold. She shuttles between hotels, her parents' house in Lehi and a friend's place in Aurora.
Kuhni is one of dozens of Gunnison residents and business owners who filed suit against Wind River Petroleum and Top Stop gas stations earlier this month.
"I don't want to be bought out. I want my life back," she says. "I'd love to have it here. But I don't trust" Wind River Petroleum.
That sentiment is common - and perfectly reasonable - in this town. Considering how often underground tanks leak - the state is now monitoring more than 450 - Gunnison seems like a warning.
The Top Stop station on Main Street was an innocuous landmark for two decades. Then in July, a slow-leaking tank turned into a gusher, spilling 20,000 gallons of gasoline under three city blocks. Wind River reported the leak weeks later.
Neighbors had already noticed. The symptoms have become annoyingly familiar - a metallic taste on the tongue, dull headache and burning eyes. Back then, they didn't know the risks of exposure to benzene down to the microgram. Back then, they slept in their homes, went to the movies, tried on prom dresses.
Wind River hired an environmental consultant. They dug trenches, installed PVC pipe and Visqueen and noisy machines to pump out and burn the gas and fumes.
The Casino Star Theatre kept its doors open - literally - until its own toxic benzene readings came back. Theatre Foundation Directors Lori Nay and Diana Spencer boxed up "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" and locked the doors. White plastic pipe snakes along historic 1912 brick. In the dirt basement, mini-landslides have developed. The roof isn't strong enough to support the air-pressure system environmental consultants have recommended.
"We saved it once," says Spencer, a retired Snow College Humanities dean. "Now we're going to have to save it again in order to continue saving it."
Lila Lee Apparel was shuttered after 57 years in business. The $290 Liz Claiborne suits are still on the rack upstairs months later. Downstairs, tulle and taffeta prom and wedding dresses have soaked up the chemicals. Lila Lee Christensen checks on the store regularly. She was born there. It's named after her. For now, she is living off her savings, hoping somehow to salvage a retirement from the dress shop. Two offers to take over the business evaporated with the vapors.
"It should be bustling in here. It's prom season," Christensen says. "Right now, it's just so quiet."
The lawsuits are about being made whole, getting back what was destroyed by a stagnant underground pool of unleaded.
But the plaintiffs also want to make an example out of a careless corporation and force someone to pay attention to an environmental mess in rural Utah. They wonder if the tank had leaked under Sugar House bungalows or the Capitol Theatre, would the company and the state have reacted sooner?
According to the lawsuits, Top Stop is responsible for six current leaks or cleanup projects - including spills in Logan, Salt Lake City and Ephraim. The company's role in a leak at 500 South and 300 East pulled $650,000 out of the state's leaking underground-tank fund in the 1990s. The Gunnison spill ate up an additional $1 million - which is money paid at the pump by every Utahn who buys gas.
Top Stop executives call the Gunnison lawsuits "unfortunate."
Doug Hansen, an engineer with the State Division of Environmental Response and Remediation, says federal requirements for gas tanks are becoming progressively more stringent. Since 1988, the state has monitored 4,300 leaks. But the number of new leaks goes down every year.
Still, I'm starting to wonder about my neighborhood convenience store.
For now, Wind River is covering Kuhni's expenses. Her backyard is filled with gravel trenches, one of the pumping machines and a garage containing other cleanup hardware.
She can't sell, can't refinance her 10 percent interest rate. Her house is worth nothing.
She watches "Erin Brockovich" over and over again.
walsh@sltrib.com
