Underground Storage Tanks Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Underground Storage Tanks (USTs) are large containers that have at least 10 percent of their volume and associated piping underground. Underground storage tanks usually contain petroleum or other hazardous gaseous or liquid materials. In 2006, there were about 680,000 underground storage tanks in the United States. The petroleum or other materials that they contain are almost always hazardous to humans, animals, or to the general environment. Whenever an underground storage tank leaks it causes damage to the environment. Quite often water wells in the area have to be shut off because of contamination. In addition to the underground storage tanks in use, there are a large unknown number of old abandoned underground storage tanks. Until the middle of the 1980s, underground storage tanks were made from plates of bare steel that had been welded together. With a high potential for rusting and leaking, the life expectancy of these older tanks is only 30-50 years.

Thousands of underground storage tanks were installed in the United States after World War II in order to supply gasoline to the growing number of automobiles that Americans were driving. Since 1950 many of these hundreds of thousands of underground storage tanks have leaked. Usually leaking gasoline, some tanks have included petroleum distillates such as diesel, heating oil, kerosene, and jet fuel. Gasoline additives pose an even more important danger than leaking gasoline. These have included lead, which can cause brain damage, and benzene, which is a known carcinogen. Just a small amount of benzene can pose a severe hazard because of its toxicity. Toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes are also toxic additives in gasoline that pose significant health risks when leaked into the environment. There are nearly 400,000 leaking underground storage sites in the United States that are being monitored by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Underground Storage Tanks.

Because over half of Americans get their drinking water from groundwater, the threat to health is very serious. In addition, leaking petroleum volatiles give off vapors that pose an explosive fire hazard that can accumulate in sewers and the basements of buildings. The EPA uses money from the Leaking Underground Storage Tank (LUST) Trust Fund to clean up the worst of the leaking underground storage tanks. Increasingly, the polluters are forced to pay for the cleanup. Since 1984, Congress has responded to the problem of leaking underground storage tanks with a range of laws. Besides the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (“Superfund”) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which list a large number of substances that are contained in USTs, Congress has provided cleanup funds.

In 1985 Congress banned the use of unprotected steel tanks and piping. It has also directed the EPA to publish regulations covering USTs that will require owners and operators of new tanks, as well as old tanks, to detect and clean up any releases from their tanks, and to establish financial resources to pay clean up costs in the event of a leak. The EPA works with state and local governments to manage current LUSTs and to prevent any new ones from occurring. The great number of tanks and their widespread distribution puts states and localities in the best position to supervise the regulation of USTs as a part of the powers of states to regulate the health and safety of their people. Many states have more stringent regulations than the federal government.

Bibliography:

Wayne B. Geyer, Handbook of Storage Tank Systems: Codes, Regulations, and Designs (CRC Press, 2000);
John P. Hartman, Technology of Underground Liquid Storage Tank Systems (John Wylie & Sons, 1997);
S. Army Corps of Engineers, Removal of Underground Storage Tanks (USTs) (University Press of the Pacific, 2005).