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.

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › Pennsylvania puts federal dollars to use for UST cleanup, removal

The company agreed to pay $22,758 to settle alleged violations of UST regulations designed to prevent, detect, and control fuel leaks from underground tanks. With hundreds of thousands of USTs throughout the country leaking fuel and other hazardous substances, curbing environmental contamination caused by such releases is one of the EPA’s top initiatives.

According to EPA records, more than 3,000 known leaking USTs await cleanup in Pennsylvania alone. The agency has recorded cleanups of more than 11,000 tanks to date.

From May 2006 to Nov. 2007, the 7-Eleven in Cranberry Township failed to perform automatic line leak detector testing annually on four 8,000-gallon tanks holding gasoline and diesel fuel and one 5,000-gallon tank containing kerosene. The same location also failed to perform line tightness tests of underground piping on the 5 tanks for a few months in 2007.

The Pittsburgh location also failed to perform automatic line leak detector tests and line tightness tests on its 5 tanks from Dec. 1, 2003 to Aug. 2007, 3 months in 2006, and 2 months in 2007.

“As part of the settlement, the company neither admitted nor denied liability for the alleged violations, but certified its compliance with applicable UST regulations. The settlement reflects the company’s cooperation with EPA’s investigation, and good faith compliance efforts,” the EPA announced.

“Leaking tanks are a major source of soil and groundwater contamination,” the EPA said in its statement. “EPA and state UST regulations are designed to reduce the risk of underground leaks and to promptly detect and properly address leaks which do occur, thus minimizing environmental harm and avoiding the costs of major cleanups,” the agency said.

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › EPA settles with Penn company over multiple UST violations

The County agreed to pay penalties of $4,600 for failing to maintain release detection records on three tanks between March and December 2007. The EPA also found that the county never performed automatic leak detection tests on two of the underground tanks between 2004 and 2007. Additionally, the EPA charged that county didn’t perform required line tightness testing on two of the underground storage tanks for 7 months in 2006 and 2007.

As part of its settlement with the EPA, Frederick County also agreed to install a $22,500 leak monitoring system on its above-ground tanks. According to the EPA, Frederick County will install the automatic tank monitoring system on one 12,000-gallon tank and 2 6,000-gallon tanks. The monitoring system will tie into a dedicated computer with software designed to track any fuel releases. Reliable monitoring of tanks, whether above ground or underground, leads to quicker and more efficient responses in the event of an accidental leak.

According to the EPA, the county “neither admitted nor denied liability for the alleged violations, but certified its compliance with applicable UST regulations. The settlement reflects the county’s cooperation with EPA’s investigation, and good faith compliance efforts.”

“With millions of gallons of gasoline, oil, and other petroleum products stored in USTs throughout the U.S., leaking tanks are a major source of soil and groundwater contamination,” the EPA said in a statement about the settlement.

“EPA and state UST regulations are designed to reduce the risk of underground leaks and to promptly detect and properly address leaks which do occur, thus minimizing environmental harm and avoiding the costs of major cleanups,” the agency said.

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › Maryland county settles UST violations with EPA

The November incident occurred when oil waste from a Childers Oil facility permeated the Kentucky River just one mile upstream from the city’s water plant. Then, in February, massive amounts of diesel fuel were released from numerous storage tanks belonging to Childers. The diesel leak exposed area residents to contaminated water for a 10-day period, during which time the city could only warn them not to cook, drink, or bathe in the water.

The state’s Energy and Environment Cabinet filed a lawsuit against Childers Oil and a related company, Mountain Rail Properties. Both companies are owned by the same family. The attorneys have also asked the Franklin, Kentucky, Circuit Judge to issue an injunction that would bar Childers Oil from allowing any future petroleum leaks. A violation of the injunction would lead to the company being held in contempt of court.

“It is the personal right of the citizens of Letcher County to live in a safe environment and to have clean drinking water,” state attorneys were quoted as saying in the CSNews Online report.

Many area residents remain suspicious of the oil company after its record of environmental violations was released. According to Lexington Herald-Leader, the company’s violations include “improperly burning debris; improperly dumping construction waste, including construction debris; leaking or improperly registered and upgraded underground fuel storage tanks; sewage station overflow; and not filing correct monitoring reports.”

According to CSNews Online, an employee of Childers told a state inspector in one of the earlier cases that the company owner, Don Childers, instructed him to burn various waste materials with ‘used motor oil from the shop’ behind the Wal-Mart in Whitesburg. Childers told the employee not to make a big fire, and that he would run over the site with a bulldozer later.

The company’s owners, however, say that they are cooperating with the state and that litigation isn’t necessary. They also say they love their city and are proud to serve it.

Ironically, Childers Oil is sponsoring an event called “River Sweep 2009,” an environmental event held by the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission to clean up area riverbanks.

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › Kentucky oil company repeatedly damages environment, sued by state

None of the plaintiffs have appeared in court since the case opened in April of 1999. Montgomery County judge Maurino Rossanese Jr. bifurcated their civil lawsuit, preventing the plaintiffs from appearing before a single jury. An attorney for the plaintiffs has appealed the judge’s decision to split up the case, but the appeal has not been ruled on.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Christine Fisher, one of the plaintiffs, told The Times Herald. She described her experience a “nightmare.” Fisher and her husband were using the contaminated water, which smelled and tasted like normal water, for everything from drinking and cooking to bathing and swimming. Fisher’s husband grew seriously ill and nearly died. Their horse, goat, and two cats weren’t as fortunate. The animals had been drinking from a contaminated pond and died from poisoning.

The contamination occurred after the owner of the Gulf station installed underground storage tanks. Manufacturer defects allowed fuel to leak through the tank lines, and the leak detection system on the tanks malfunctioned. Estimates on the amount of fuel that leaked before the problem was discovered range from 12,000 gallons to 50,000 gallons. The leakage was so severe that fuel collected in a well across the street caused the well house to explode.

In addition to the lingering health problems many residents of Blue Bell face, residents also worry that their homes and property have become almost worthless. Many communities once affected by an environmental disaster carry a stigma long after the land has been cleaned.

“You can’t sell a house here now,” Fisher told The Times Herald.

Plaintiffs staged a protest outside the Montgomery County Courthouse Monday in an effort to bring attention to the unsettled cases.

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › Penn community seeks justice years after massive fuel leak

“TravelCenters of America has knowingly and repeatedly disregarded California’s underground fuel storage laws for years,” attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. told the Central Valley Business Times.

According to the CVBT, Riverside, California, District Attorney Rod Pacheco filed a similar suit against TravelCenters in July of last year, alleging the company violated multiple state regulations governing the possession of underground storage tanks, which almost always store fuel and other hazardous substances. Whereas the Riverside lawsuit focused on TravelCenters in that county, the latest lawsuit names TravelCenter’s facilities statewide.

Responding to the Riverside County lawsuit last year, TravelCenters called the laws unconstitutional. The company also claimed that federal laws pre-empted California’s laws, and that the state’s regulations violate due process.

According to the CVBT, the Riverside Department of Environmental Health periodically inspected USTs at the TravelCenters facility in Riverside County over a number of years. The officials found numerous violations of California’s underground storage tank laws, yet the company ignored repeated warnings to fix most of the problems.

California has some of the strictest environmental protection standards in the country, which often exceed those established by the federal government. While critics say that California’s laws are too tough on big business, the truth is that stricter regulations compel the automotive, fuel, and other industries to develop better, cleaner technology. Where regulations are too lax, manufacturers often land in court defending their products while people become harmed or killed.

Legal defeats can be extremely costly for defendants, especially if punitive damages are imposed. But money talks. Those costly penalties ultimately persuade big corporations to boost their own standards, which may involve implementing simple and inexpensive modifications or investing in developing entirely new and innovative technologies. As technology evolves and products improve,  the earth benefits. People benefit.

Instead of complying with the same state laws to which other gas stations adhere, TravelCenters now faces paying “the statutory maximum of $25,000 in civil penalties for each day of each violation, which could amount to millions of dollars in penalties,” the CVBT report says.

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › California sues truck stop chain for UST violations

According to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, the agency is “providing immediate growth opportunities across the nation, as well as long-term protection from dangerous pollution in the land and water.”

“EPA is putting people to work by serving our core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” Jackson explained.

Hundreds of thousands of storage tanks are buried throughout the country. Many of the tanks, some of which are several decades old, continue to leak fuel and other environmentally hazardous substances into the soil and groundwater. A hole the size of a pin head can release as many as 400 gallons of fuel into the ground and water table in one year, and 1 gallon of fuel renders 1 million gallons of water unpotable for humans and wildlife.

Nearly half of all Americans get their drinking water from underground sources – a fact that makes the identification and removal of leaking USTs imperative.

Removal of a leaking tank and cleanup of the contaminated area is a typically an expensive task. While liability for the tanks (and all removal and cleanup costs) normally falls on the tank owners, sometimes the EPA has to assume the expense of assessing, removing tanks, and cleaning up when the “responsible party is unknown, unwilling, unable, or the cleanup is an emergency response.”

Nearly $191 million of the stimulus money will go to all U.S. states and territories for leaking UST removal and environmental cleanup. $6.3 million will fund assessment and cleanup of sites in Indian territory. $3 million will be retained by the EPA for management and oversight.

Click here for more Information about UST program funding and the EPA’s implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act .

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › EPA receives $200 million in stimulus money for UST removal, cleanup

Underground storage tank

The Navajo inspectors are also authorized to issue citations for tanks that do not meet federal EPA criteria for safety. Fines for problematic tanks, normally ranging from $500 to $3,000, encourage tank owners to bring and keep their tanks into compliance with U.S. regulations.

Federally recognized Native American tribes exist as sovereign entities, yet they are still subject to federal laws. According to the EPA’s UST / LUST National Native American Lands directive, “Underground storage tanks located on tribal lands generally are not subject to state laws. As a result, unless a state acts as a tribe’s agent pursuant to a formal agreement with a tribe, EPA and the tribe are responsible for implementing and enforcing the UST program on tribal lands.”

The EPA estimates that approximately 6,000 USTs are buried on Native American land. Most of the USTs on native lands are concentrated in the western half of the country, especially in the EPA’s Region 8, which includes the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. Tanks buried on Navajo land are generally concentrated in the Arizona, California, and Nevada region in an area about the size of West Virginia. EPA estimates there are 200 tanks on Navajo land.

Preventing underground storage tanks from leaking is one of the EPA’s top priorities. Such tanks usually hold fuel, motor oil, and other environmentally hazardous substances. In just one year, 400 gallons of fuel can be released into the ground and water from a single hole the size of a pinhead. Just one gallon of fuel will make one million gallons of water unsafe for human and animal consumption. Hundreds of thousands of USTs are buried throughout the country, many of them older, single-layered steel tanks that have corroded over time.

The EPA hopes that its pilot program on the Navajo Nation will serve as a model for other tribes nationwide.

New storage tanks must be equipped with spill and overfill protection and leak detection equipment. They must also be double lined and made of corrosion-resistant polymers. Leaks and spills that are promptly detected are far easier and less expensive to clean up, the EPA says.

Source: http://www.eponline.com/articles/71515/

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › EPA trains Navajo Nation UST inspectors

Single wall steel tanks are prone to corrosion, especially when they contain highly caustic liquids such as fuel. With hundreds of thousands of leaking storage tanks buried underground throughout the country, identifying and removing the tanks has been a major initiative of the US Environmental Protection Agency and many state environmental agencies.

The cost of replacing the tanks, however, is extremely prohibitive – especially for the mom and pop operations. The average cost of replacing a single underground storage tank is $250,000. Gas stations with multiple tanks can expect a bill of about $400,000. Aside from the expense itself, the trouble for many small and independent gas station owners is acquiring financing for the job.

“Even banks that our stations have had a long relationship with are not going to loan them $250,000 for an asset that nobody can see,” said one gas station owner to the Orlando Sentinel, adding that in the bank’s eyes, the upgrade would not result in greater income.

The requirement has caused the value of older gas stations to plummet. Any new owners would have to replace the tanks before they could sell gas. If they chose not to sell gas, the new owners would still be liable for the old tanks. Federal law requires station owners to have a $1 million insurance policy. At the same time, many underwriters have stopped insuring stations with single-wall tanks, forcing some stations to stop selling gas or close their doors.

According to Mike Ashley of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, gas station owners have had ample time to prepare for the big switch. He reminded all facilities requiring upgrades that the upgrade rules have been in effect since 1991 – ample time to prepare and comply.

Gas station owners hoping there might be a reprieve or extension of the Dec. 31 deadline are likely to be disappointed. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has not granted an extension for upgrades since 1983, when it became one of the first states to establish UST regulations.

Even a very slow leak from a UST is an environmental hazard. Just one gallon of fuel will contaminate one million gallons of water and the surrounding soil, endangering the health of humans and wildlife.

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › Deadline looms for Florida gas station underground storage tanks

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.

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › ‘Tom Sawyer’ city cited for underground storage tank violations

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that there are 623,319 USTs in the United States and its territories. Of those USTs, there have been 479,817 “confirmed releases” or leaks and 377,019 completed cleanups. That leaves a national total of 102,798 known leaking tanks awaiting removal and cleanup.

Even the slowest dripping tanks can pollute millions of gallons of groundwater. It takes just one gallon of fuel to contaminate one million gallons of water. It doesn’t matter whether you get your water from a municipal reservoir or a well on your property; your water supply could be at risk of contamination by leaking USTs in your area.

Fortunately, there are some telltale signs that an underground tank may be leaking. Business owners with USTs and individuals alike should be aware of these signals. Early detection can help prevent major health and environmental problems.

• You or other people smell escaped product or see anything like an oily sheen on water near the facility
• Your neighbors complain of vapors in their basements or about water that tastes or smells like petroleum.
• Someone reports unusual operating conditions at your facility, such as erratic behavior of the dispensing pump.
• You receive or generate results from leak detection monitoring and testing that indicate a leak.

If you suspect that a UST is leaking, you should immediately notify the appropriate agency for your state or region. Tanks located in Indian Country should be reported to the EPA Regional UST program office.

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › Do you live near a leaking underground storage tank?

The old tanks are made of steel, which is highly corrosive. The underground tanks were especially prone to rust, thereby allowing the fuel to leak out into the surrounding earth.

Pat Coyne, director of business development for Environmental Data Resources, Inc. said that steel tanks tend to rot like “Swiss cheese,” according to a report by the Associated Press.

The rusting tanks and other programs once administered by the Civil Defense Preparedness Agency became FEMA’s responsibility after the agency was formed. Decades later, the agency is still trying to inventory the tanks it owns – now numbering more than 2,000. The agency still doesn’t know the exact geographical locations of some of the tanks, whether they are above ground or underground, or whether they are leaking. The paper trail tied to the tanks spans several decades and hands. No evidence to date suggests that these government-owned underground storage tanks (USTs) have created environmental or health problems because of leakage.

But the government tanks, which FEMA and the FCC have tossed back and forth like a hot potato of  responsibility, are just one part of a much more massive problem: the existence of more than half a million USTs holding fuel and oil buried throughout the country. No one knows exactly how many of the tanks could be leaking.

USTs that leak diesel or other fuel can easily contaminate the groundwater. It takes just one gallon of diesel fuel to effectively contaminate one million gallons of water, putting people at risk for cancer, kidney damage, nervous system disorders and a number of other health hazards.

FEMA has worked to repair and or replace some of the tanks since the 1990s. Others have been removed or filled with sand. But many of the tanks, including many suspected leakers, have yet to be removed. More modern tanks must be made of leak-proof polymers and have a leak detection system.

FEMA spokesman Dan Stoneking told the AP that it is working to fix the problem of all the leaking tanks under its jurisdiction. “We are committed to upholding our obligations to remediate, remove or upgrade them as necessary,” he told the AP. “We believe in adhering to any relevant environmental rule or law and will do so.”

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › leaking fuel tanks: a cold war legacy

What’s leaking?
Most underground storage tanks leak gasoline, and the main chemicals of concern are benzene, toluene, and ethylbenzene. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has established levels of these chemicals “where it is known that there is no risk to the health to all individuals.”

Adverse health effects are only seen if exposures to these chemicals are significant.

Benzene: Long-term exposure to high enough levels has adverse effects on the blood and bone marrow. Long term exposure to benzene in the air can cause luekemia, which is a concern if benzene could move from the soil or groundwater into a home.

Toluene: Exposure to high levels can effect the nervous system and kidneys. Exposure to high levels in the air can cause light-headness and dizzyness.

Ethylbenzene: Exposure to high levels in the air can cause eye and throat irritation, light-headedness and dizzyness. These is a potential for damage to the kidneys from exposure to high levels.

Source: Stuart C. Schmitz, Environmental Toxicologist, Iowa Department of Public Health

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › Iowa’s 6,200 leaking underground storage tanks

There are about 6,200 leaking underground storage tanks in the state — and more than 1,500 are considered ongoing contamination risks. Some of the leaking tanks have been problems for more than 15 years. Almost 820 are labeled high-risk.

State officials say they are trying to devise new rules so that the most hazardous sites, which often take years to clean up because of bureaucratic red tape and legal wrangling, can be addressed faster.
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See where they are: Click here to search a map and database to see how many of the state’s 6,200 leaking underground tanks are near you.

The state’s backlog is down about 30 percent from five years ago, according to statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency, but about 20 leaking tanks deemed in need of action are on school property.

“We are taking enforcement action against those who don’t fix (leaks),” said Elaine Douskey, who supervises the underground storage tank program with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. “We are staying after them.” Left undetected, leaking tanks can cause big problems, as residents in Climbing Hill, an unincorporated town of less than 150 people in Woodbury County in northwest Iowa, discovered.

They learned almost 18 years ago that two underground tanks, including one that belonged to a school, contaminated five residential drinking water wells and one public supply well that belonged to a restaurant. State officials provided bottled water for almost nine years and then switched the town to filtration systems before homeowners received new wells around 2004, said Rochelle Cardinale, an environmental coordinator with the DNR.

Routine tests show the new wells are safe, but some residents still question whether lingering contamination will someday taint that water supply, too.

“I’m worried about where that contamination might go,” said Gary Little, who works and lives with his family in the Barn, a local cafe.

Longtime residents are also concerned about developing cancer, he said. “They don’t know how long they’ve been drinking that stuff.”

People who ingest or breathe high concentrations of chemicals released from a tank could wind up with leukemia, kidney damage, nervous system disorders and other ailments, according to state public health officials.

A report by the Iowa Department of Public Health estimates Climbing Hill residents were exposed to chemicals, including benzene, for a year or two before the leak was detected. That wasn’t long enough to put them at greater risk for getting cancer, the report states.

The Climbing Hill leaks are still labeled high-risk; there is still benzene in the soil. In high enough concentrations, benzene can cause leukemia.

The site might be downgraded because the wells have been removed, Cardinale said. The department isn’t sure how much longer it will have to monitor the area, she said.

The high-risk designation means a leak could expose people to dangerous chemicals. It doesn’t mean contamination has already occurred.

Challenges exist in finding, tracking tanks that leak

DNR officials know how many leaks there are, but say they don’t keep track of how many times leaking tanks have tainted drinking water, polluted lakes or streams, or seeped into basements in Iowa.

Douskey said the agency’s data on the leaks have that detail, but the only way to tally up that data is to review each file manually.

However, the agency does respond quickly to reports of suspected contamination – either in the water or the air, which sometimes is the first clue there is a leak nearby, Douskey said.

One example is from February 2006, when employees at a day care in Shelby said tap water smelled like gasoline. The likely culprit was a plastic water line running past a gas station. The day care moved and the lines were replaced.

But without evidence of contamination, it’s not readily apparent to residents whether a leaking underground storage tank near them poses a hazard because each site is different, Douskey said. Soil composition, the size of the tank, the depth of nearby wells, the age and extent of the leak, and the groundwater table all factor into where pollutants are likely to spread and whether they present a risk to the public.

“If I lived right next door to a gas station, I would be curious whether they have a plume under that site,” Douskey said, adding that anyone can view the agency’s records on leaking tanks for more information.

If a leak occurs in clay soil, it could stay on the site forever and never be a problem, but a leak in sandy soil travels farther, she said. But even if it spreads, that doesn’t mean it’s a risk, she added.

Leaking gasoline tanks can also present the risk of fire and explosion because vapors travel.

When a leak is detected, state officials inform residents and businesses within 100 feet of the affected area, and they take soil, water and air samples if they suspect any contamination, Cardinale said.

Cardinale said it’s unusual for a leak to travel much beyond 400 feet, or about a city block. The leak could spread farther if it’s near a municipal well that pumps lots of water and can pull contaminants in.

Tracing contamination, cleanup can take years

It took 14 years for officials to figure out how to handle the Climbing Hill contamination. That case was extreme, but cases sometimes linger several years while agencies and owners decide what to do, Cardinale said.

The agency and the industry admit it often takes far too long to take action, and both sides are trying to implement new methods to speed up detection and cleanup. Aided by new federal laws, state regulators also have more tools to guarantee that tank owners comply.

Some of the changes include:

• Devising a better way to measure the actual potential spread of contamination, which could downgrade some sites where the current risk might be overstated, although industry officials and the DNR are currently at odds over how to do this.

• Using inspectors from third-party companies to check all tanks every two years. State inspectors had such a backlog that some sites went five years without an inspection.

• Shutting down gas stations or fueling facilities that don’t comply by preventing fuel trucks from filling the stations’ tanks, in accordance with a federal law that went into effect last year.

• Requiring all new tanks to have enhanced safety measures, leak detection devices and an extra outer shell. Traditional steel tanks, prone to corrosion, have been replaced with specially coated Fiberglas tanks resistant to gasoline, diesel and ethanol.

• Bringing all parties together at once, especially for high-risk sites that need more attention.

“If we know it’s high-risk, we decided it’d be best to get everybody at the table at the same time,” Douskey said. “That seems to have cut the time down significantly.”

Jeff Hove, regulatory affairs manager of the Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Stores of Iowa, agreed. “Especially if it’s a newer release, you’re going to see it move forward immediately,” he said.

But about three-fourths of the remaining cleanup work in Iowa must be funded by taxpayers.

Evaluating a leak requires rounds of monitoring and testing to figure out how far contamination has spread. It’s a problem if pollutants reach private drinking water wells, city water supplies, sewer lines, lakes or streams, or seep into basements as a chemical vapor.

If the current property owners didn’t install the tank — or knew nothing about it when they bought the land — finding out who is responsible adds another hurdle.

Debating whether to excavate the soil, remove the tank, extract vapors or take other action turns into back-and-forth between government agencies and site owners, Hove said.

“It can be a really long process,” Hove said. “Sometimes the regulator will say, ‘Well, industry’s dragging their feet.’ And industry says, ‘We did our report and sent it in 12 months ago and it hasn’t been reviewed by DNR yet.’ ”

Eastern Iowa school district spends thousands on site

In the meantime, some site owners simply watch and wait. Near an elementary school in Lowden, a town of about 800 residents some 40 miles northwest of Davenport, inspectors test six groundwater samples each year.

Leaks from an old fuel oil tank used to heat the school’s boiler are in proximity to a city drinking water well. That means the site has been labeled high-risk, even though the tank was removed in 2004 and the tests show contaminant levels falling within allowable ranges, said Mary Jo Hainstock, superintendent of the North Cedar Community School District.

The district spent about $14,200 in 2004 to have the tank removed and has been paying $1,300 to a private company each year since for the tests.

“It’s thousands of dollars,” she said. “But when you want to do things right, it’s really not an option not to do it.”

The district hopes the state will reclassify the site soon, although Hainstock is prepared to wait up to a year for her district’s application to be reviewed.

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › Iowa pollution perils lurk among buried fuel tanks