Cleaning Up US Fuel Tank Leaks Costs $12 Billion - GAO
Date: 23-Feb-07
Country: USA
Author: Chris Baltimore
Tanks buried beneath service stations and convenience stores, which hold thousands of gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel, have sprung leaks, polluting the soil and underground drinking water supplies.
Cleaning up the problem will take years, according to the Government Accountability Office, which issued the report at the request of Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
After surveying states, the GAO said that $12 billion in public funds is needed to clean up about 54,000 spill sites. Tank owners are responsible for paying to clean up the 63,000 other known leaks, but some lack adequate insurance coverage to pay the cleanup bill, the GAO found.
Dingell said the federal government has been too slow to tap the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund, or LUST, a federal cleanup pool set aside in 1986 to aide state cleanups.
The pool, funded by a tenth-of-a-cent per gallon federal tax on gasoline, will hit a $3 billion surplus at the end of the 2008 fiscal year.
But this year's White House budget requests only $72.4 million for cleanup, even though the tax generated $197 million in 2006 and the fund generated $99 million in interest, Dingell said.
"This report shows the gross inadequacy and disgraceful nature of President Bush's most recent budget request," Dingell said, warning that inaction "places human health and the environment at an increased risk."
The US Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the cleanup program, estimates that per-site cleanups cost an average $125,000.
EPA and the states have spent more than $10 billion over 20 years to clean up spills but more than 100,000 releases have not yet been cleaned up.
The number of sites needing cleanup could rise dramatically. The GAO said that states were unable to estimate costs for 8,000 sites, and 43 states expected to confirm nearly 17,000 new releases in the next five years that would require public funds to clean up.
Costs can also rise dramatically if sites are contaminated with methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, a fuel additive no longer in widespread use that has contaminated water supplies in dozens of states, rendering it undrinkable.
Over half of the 14,800 sites on California's cleanup backlog involve MTBE contamination, said Rep. Hilda Solis, the California Democrat who also requested the GAO investigation.
Average California per site cleanup costs is about $174,000 in public funds, which rises to about $583,000 when MTBE is present, Solis said.
"This report shows clearly that the leaking underground storage tanks are not getting cleaned up," Solis said.