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

The Environmental Protection Agency announced today its allocation of $200 million in funds appropriated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – popularly known as the economic stimulus package, which President Obama signed into law on February 17. The EPA will use these funds for the assessment and cleanup of at least 1,600 leaking underground storage tanks throughout the country, creating or retaining “significant numbers of jobs” in the process.

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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.

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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.

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Leaking underground fuel tanks threaten to contaminate drinking water, lakes, streams and homes across Iowa as environmental officials change rules to speed up detection and cleanup.

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.

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