At first the Trauds assumed the water’s bad odor and taste came from being unused, so they gave it the benefit of the doubt and waited a couple of weeks. To their surprise, the problem only grew worse.

The only apparent solution was to have the water tested by a lab, which cost the Trauds a few hundred dollars. When the results were in, the lab contacted David Traud and advised him not to use the water because it contained gasoline components. David called Holli, who was staying with family in North Carolina with their newborn son, and told her to remain where she was.

In the following weeks, the Trauds’ neighbors, David and Irene Mullins, also noticed a problem with the water from their well. Tests from Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality confirmed that both wells were “severely impacted” by fuel that had been leaking from an underground storage tank at the old gas station. Worse, the leak had been detected more than 10 years ago.

DEQ geologist Todd Pitsenberger told News & Arts that his agency tested the land around the buried tanks back in 1998 and concluded that “the release was relatively minor.” The DEQ took no action because there were no springs or wells in the immediate vicinity.

So when the Trauds built their home in 2007, the county health department issued permits for the construction of wells, unaware that the land was contaminated.

The UST leak, which county officials presumed to be small and relatively harmless, damaged the surrounding environment so severely that the Trauds and their neighbors still can’t drink their tap water. The DEQ installed filtration systems that make the water suitable for washing, but it is still not potable. The agency plans to install new wells this summer.

Cleanup of the site is expected to cost approximately $81,000, a small cost compared to the time, money, and aggravation the Trauds and their neighbors have endured, not to mention the health risks that exposure to fuel-contaminated water can cause.

Geologist Pitsenberger told the News & Arts that underground storage tanks are a big problem in this country. “They started putting tanks in the ground back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and nobody really thought ‘These things are going to leak.’” In the 80s, however, the Environmental Protection Agency realized that the tanks did leak and that hundreds of thousands of them lay buried in the soil throughout the country, compromising both the health of the environment and the humans who consumed the contaminated water.

SOURCE: Leaking Underground Storage Tanks › Family’s water contaminated by leaking gas station tanks

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