Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is using part of the $6.1 million in federal stimulus money it received to remove three leaking underground storage tanks in Union Township, according to a report in the Herald-Standard. The tanks in Union Township, located in the southwestern corner of the state, are only 3 of 71 tanks slated for removal statewide this year.

Federal environmental records suggest the UST cleanup money will be well spent. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Pennsylvania has 3,368 leaking underground storage tank cleanups in its backlog to be completed.

Pennsylvania spends $1.5 million per year on average for UST removals and cleanups. Federal and state governments made leaking USTs a priority in the 1980s, once they understood the number and scope of  environmental threats posed by hundreds of thousands of individual fuel leaks throughout the country.

Federal and state laws now require that all new USTs have double walls, corrosion resistance, and a leak detection system in place before being buried. All USTs are certified, registered, and regularly monitored by the state – all of which amount to an enormous and expensive undertaking.

Compounding the problem of leaking tanks are the cases in which owners of USTs can’t be located or are either unable or unwilling to foot the costs attached to UST removal, cleanup, and replacement, which can run between $200,000 and $250,000 per tank.

In such cases, the Pennsylvania’s DEP will prioritize tank removal and pay for the cost with public funds, recovering the money with legal action when it can.

The federal government won’t release funds for the remediation of leaking USTs until the state explains how the money will be used. Nearly every state received UST cleanup funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.