'Tom Sawyer' city cited for underground storage tank violations
February 23rd, 2009 by Kurt Niland
The city of Hannibal, Missouri, the boyhood home of author Mark Twain and the setting of his fictional classics The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has been cited by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources for violations of underground storage tank (UST) regulations.
The faulty UST is located at the city’s marina, where it is used to store fuel. Hannibal’s marina and docks, situated on the western edge of the Mississippi River, are an essential part of the historic community, which every year draws thousands of tourists from around the world.
Faulty USTs are an enormous environmental problem in the United States. Records kept by the Environmental Protection Agency indicate that hundreds of thousands of tanks throughout the country have leaked or continue to leak fuel and other hazardous substances. Just one gallon of fuel will pollute one million gallons of water — a sobering fact considering Hannibal’s faulty tank sits on America’s most vital waterway.
According to a report in the Quincy Herald-Whig, regulators cited Hannibal for three violations: failure to properly conduct and maintain corrosion protection; failure to comply with temporary closure requirements; and failure to permanently close a substandard underground storage tank.
Chris Atkinson, director of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, told the Herald-Whig that last summer’s floods are to blame for the tank’s condition. During the floods, electricity that ran a 24-hour monitoring system on the gas dock was cut off. Electricity also powered a system that protected the tank’s pipes from rusting. The flood also removed the gas dock from its moorings, thereby forcing the city to disconnect electrical and gas lines.
To fix the problem, Hannibal can stop selling gas at the marina completely, install an above-ground tank, or install a new UST. Whatever is done, the solution will prove to be costly. Putting in a new UST would cost approximately $50,000.
“No matter what we do, there’s going to be a cost, and frankly none of this is in the budget,” Atkinson told the Herald-Whig.
The city is currently repairing the flood-damaged docks, a project that FEMA estimates will cost more than $240,000. That total, however, does not include replacing the old UST.