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The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation has received $218,000 in stimulus funding to help clean up contamination from underground gasoline storage tanks in Friendsville.

The state has already been investigating allegations of groundwater pollution in Friendsville. In April, employees of Chattanooga-based Tri-State drilled groundwater monitoring wells on Main Street in Friendsville under the direction of TDEC, which is investigating the possible presence of chemicals related to leaking gasoline storage tanks from the old Macy Lee Texaco.

The funding will allow “high vacuum extraction of contaminated groundwater, preparation of a corrective action plan, corrective action system installation and one year of system operation,” according to TDEC.

Gov. Phil Bredesen and the Department of Environment on Friday announced that Tennessee will receive more than $4.6 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to use toward clean-up activities at about 44 leaking underground storage tank sites across the state.

“(The Friendsville cleanup) will receive funding through that recovery act grant,” said Tisha Calabrese Benton, TDEC communications director, “We’ve already been working at the Friendsville site. That work will continue with this additional funding.”

Most of the 44 sites in the state are already known to have had a release of petroleum to the environment and many still contain petroleum underground storage tanks that have been abandoned by their owners without being properly closed.

“These funds provided by the Recovery Act will allow contractors to put more people on the job of performing this important environmental cleanup work,” Bredesen said in a press release. “In addition to the benefit gained by cleaning up petroleum contamination at specific sites, the funds will provide for the purchase of equipment that will be available for use at additional sites in the future.”