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› $700,000,000 settlement in pollution case
The owners of a gas station in Waldo, Ohio, have agreed to pay a civil penalty of $161,550 for a petroleum leak that took place more than 20 years ago. According to Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray and the Ohio Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Underground Storage Tank Regulations, the Waldo Duchess gas station will also “conduct the necessary corrective actions and cleanup” to resolve the complaint.
A leaking underground storage tank on the premises of an old, defunct gas station in Keswick, Virginia, demonstrates how destructive a seemingly innocuous fuel tank leak can be. A report by Charlottesville News & Arts tells the story of David and Holli Traud, who bought a brand-new home just east of Charlottesville last year. However, when they moved in, they noticed that the tap water in their new home had a strange smell and bad taste.
In a 3-1 vote, California’s State Water Resources Control Board approved legislation that will require motor fuels containing more than 20 percent biodiesel to be stored in above ground tanks. It seems strange that regular petroleum diesel can be stored in underground tanks while “green” fuel must be stored above ground for fear of leakage and possible environmental contamination. But California has a law mandating that underground storage tanks be independently certified as leak proof before they can be used to store new types of fuel, such as high-grade biodiesels. That testing and certification process can take as long as three years.
Forty-five neighbors from a Pennsylvania community that was contaminated by a massive fuel leak more than a decade ago are still fighting for justice. Many residents of Blue Bell, a town in Montgomery County, Penn., became sick in the late 1990s after consuming water contaminated by several thousand gallons of gasoline released from an underground storage tank at a local Gulf gas station. All of the affected people had wells or access to wells.
The state of California is suing Ohio-based TravelCenters of America, LLC, the owner and operator of several truck stops throughout the state, claiming the company will not comply with California’s underground storage tank regulations.
In the past few weeks we have looked at how underground storage tanks, particularly older tanks belonging to gas stations, can and often do compromise the health of the surrounding environment and everything in it, including humans. The Environmental Protection Agency has logged more than 620,000 active storage tanks throughout the United States. Of those tanks, some 480,000 tanks have or have had “confirmed releases.” The problem is so extensive that the EPA established the Office of Underground Storage Tanks to confront it. Since its founding 25 years ago, the EPA’s UST office has removed 1.7 million substandard tanks and completed 377,019 cleanups. Thousands of tanks continue to leak.
Victor, a town just outside Rochester, New York, is being sued by the owners of a Pontillo’s Pizzeria, a regional franchise that owns and operates a restaurant just next to the town’s newly constructed town hall. The plaintiffs say workers involved in the construction of the new town hall building ruptured underground storage tanks containing fuel, which polluted their land. According to a report by MPNnow of Rochester, the suit was filed this month in New York’s Supreme Court for an unspecified amount of damages.
Many Florida gas station owners are worrying about the future of their businesses because of a state law that will go into effect on December 31, 2009. On that day, the law will require all gas station owners with single-wall underground fuel tanks and pipes to upgrade to double-wall tanks or stop selling gas. Industry insiders expect that of the state’s 9,200 gas stations, 800 to 1,500 stores will have to close. 3,156 gas stations and other facilities with underground storage tanks (USTs) in Florida require the upgrade.
A leaking underground storage tank (or LUST) is the basis of a lawsuit in which a Muncie, Indiana, man accuses his neighbors of failing to warn him about an old tank on their property that was slowly but steadily contaminating the ground. Jeffrey Wray, a computer technician for a local hospital, alleges that his neighbors, the owners of a former gas station, failed to warn him that the ground and water beneath his house had been contaminated by fuel from a LUST. According to the lawsuit, the problem continued unabated for years, finally forcing Wray out of his home.
Cleanup efforts are underway at the site of a former gas station in Marshfield, Massachusetts. A Gulf gas station once occupied the site but was demolished in the late 1990s. Tests conducted on the property revealed the soil and water to be contaminated by fuel. The city of Marshfield is using $50,000 in funds from Massachusetts’ Leaking Underground Storage Tank Release Prevention Program to pay Coler & Colantonio, an environmental engineering firm that is assessing the extent of damage to the land and water table on the site. The city and civic groups plan to convert the land into a park.
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