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

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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When we talk about underground storage tanks, we normally talk about how the contents of a leaking UST contaminate surrounding soil and groundwater. This week, however, the Denver Post reported a case of the opposite when soil contaminated with deadly bacteria permeated the walls of one town’s UST. Because the town used the faulty tank to store clean drinking water, hundreds and possibly thousands of town residents became sick.

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As many has half a million people who lived on or near the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina have been exposed to highly toxic chemicals that infiltrated the camp’s groundwater from 1957 to 1987. The U.S. government and the Marine Corps blame a now-closed dry cleaning company that once operated off-base but in the area of the camp, in addition to toxic chemicals that leaked from underground storage tanks and unsafe chemical disposal procedures on base.

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An Illinois newspaper reports that former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich skimmed millions of dollars off his state’s motor fuel taxes fund to pay for his health care program. According to one local businessman whose company, United Science Industries, removed leaking underground storage tanks for the state, Illinois owes him nearly $20 million for tank cleanup work already performed. But the money isn’t there.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Unless you live in a remote, rural region of the United States, chances are you live within a few feet of an underground storage tank (UST). These tanks, which by definition have at least 10% of their volume underground, typically store fuel and other hazardous – and highly corrosive – liquids. Older tanks were made without the benefits of corrosion-resistant polymers or double containment standards, so they can easily leak. In fact, they usually do.

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In the 1960s, during some of the tensest years of the Cold War, the federal government gave fuel tanks and generators to radio broadcasters throughout the country. The program intended to give the radio stations a means to broadcast news and vital information in the event of an emergency. The Federal Communications Commission and the Civil Defense Preparedness Agency managed the program, which involved some 700 stations by 1979, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency was formed. Now, decades later, federal officials believe that hundreds of the tanks are leaking.

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