o[~7
New England Interstate
Water Pollution Control
Commission
Boott Mills South
1OO Foot of John Street
Lowell, Massachusetts
01852-1124
Bulletin
June
20O2
LUST.
A Report On Federal & State Programs To Control Leaking Underground Storage Tanks
looking for Leaks in All the Wrong Places
A Short Story with an Epiphany
by Marcel Moreau
The Chief looked over his reading
glasses from the report he had
been reading as his senior field
inspector shuffled into his
office. The Chief had sent
him out that morning to
investigate a recently discov-
ered release at an UST facil-
ity. The Inspector slumped
into the chair across from
the Chief's desk.
"Well whaf d ya find?"
muttered the Chief.
"Not much," was the
noncommittal reply. "The
usual stained soil and smelly
excavation; no groundwater
yet, but contamination likely.
Water supplies a couple hundred
feet away, MTBE in the gasoline."
Though unspoken, both the Chief
and the Inspector recognized that it was
only a matter of time before this release hit the head-
lines—and there had been too many of these headlines
of late.
"So what happened? What leaked?" grumbled the
Chief. He didn't like sitting in the hot seat when some
well owner's legislator called demanding an explana-
tion.
"Dunno," said the Inspector. "Most of the site was
dug up by the time I got there. Piping all gone. Saw the
last tank come out. It looked okay."
"Great!" exclaimed the Chief, throwing the report
down on his desk. "Reporters, legislators, lawyers,
and well owners all breathing down my neck wanting
to know why this is happening, and all you can tell me
is 'Dunno!' How are we ever going to get to the bottom
• continued on page 2
Florida Launches a Storage Tank System Cause of Leak Study
PEI Members Weigh in on UST System Performance
Time to Rededicate Ourselves to Tough Enforcement
ICBO to Develop an UST Operator Certification Exam
Maine's UST Siting Law Revisited
STI Publications Update
Do Monitoring Wells Monitor Well? Part II
Reevaluating the Upward Vapor Migration Risk Pathway
All Aboard the UST Train
Lose Some MTBE Lately?
MTBE Hot Spot at Indiana Elementary School
Jury Says Oil Companies Knew of MTBE's Hazards
-------
LUSTLine-Bulletin 41 • June 2002
• Looking for Leaks from page 2
of this with answers like that? How
are we ever going to know if this pro-
gram has accomplished anything?
How are we going to continually
improve the performance of storage
systems if we don't know what's
going wrong? How are we going to
fix problems that we can't even be
sure exist? How are we going to get
to a place where our grandchildren
aren't trying to solve the same prob-
lems we are? Look, I want some
answers, and I want you to find
them. Don't bother coming back until
you figure out a way to get the infor-
mation we need."
"Yes, sir. I'll get right on it."
The Inspector shuffled down the
hall, grabbed a mug of black coffee,
snaked his way past stacks of unread
reports, journals, and guidance docu-
ments, and settled into his cramped
quarters. He knew the Chief was seri-
ous about getting to the bottom of
storage system leaks. But he also
knew some disturbing facts.
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Anecdotally Speaking
Fourteen years and over 400,000
releases after the federal tank rules
went into effect, no one could tell
him with any certainty where the
leaks were coming from in today's
systems. He knew there had been
some attempts to answer the ques-
tion, but the results of tank autopsy
studies completed so far had been
dismal. He had some hope that more
recent studies might produce better
results, but he doubted that they
would produce the kind of informa-
tion the Chief was after. The anecdo-
tal evidence pointed heavily towards
pressurized piping systems as
today's dominant source of releases,
* If you want to really know which UST
~ component has failed, you can't go
at it with a backhoe any more than a
** coroner can do an autopsy with a
"- chain saw.
|
"i' !
but specifics on what was failing and
why were nonexistent as far as he
could tell.
He suspected the problem was in
the data. It was not easy to come by.
Because the state cleanup fund essen-
tially provided "no fault" insurance
to the tank owner, there was no
financial incentive to find the cause
of the release and seek cleanup cost
recovery through the legal process
from anyone who might potentially
be responsible for the release.
There was also typically no one
on site during repair or removal pro-
cedures who was there specifically to
determine the origin of the release.
He doubted that among his own staff
he had people experienced in finding
release sources, and he had never
heard about any course on how to
identify a leak.
Tank installers, though knowl-
edgeable, had their own agendas. If
they had installed or maintained the
UST system, they were not likely to
point out their own mistakes. Nor
were they too keen on snitching on
their competitors, for they knew that
that competitor might some day be
uncovering some of the mistakes that
they had buried over the years. Tank
workers were generally paid by the
tank owner and were not anxious to
point out that the release should have
been discovered long ago through
leak detection. Truth is, a great many
more people had an interest in hiding
the source of the release than in find-
ing it.
Getting the answers the Chief
wanted was going to take some good
data, but he could see that this was
not going to be an easy nut to crack.
As his spirits began to flag in the face
of the task, his eyes rested briefly on
the top document in a pile that he
had generally designated as his "ref-
erence" pile. The title, "EPA Require-
ments for Quality Assurance Project
Plans," suddenly clicked into his con-
sciousness.
The new department quality
assurance guru had recently dropped
it on his desk, saying, "If s dreadfully
dull reading, but if you've got ques-
tions, here's a description of a process
for getting answers." Hmmm, he
thought, maybe there's something in
it that would help...
The Cold, Hard Facts
A week later, the Inspector handed
the Chief a slim document. "This isn't
the answer, Chief, but if you want to
get the answers, here's a description
of what we need to do."
"Listen," growled the Chief, "I
told you not to come back until you
had answers. I don't need another
report telling me what I already
know we don't know."
"I know," replied the Inspector.
Though their interactions were often
gruff, the two had worked together
since the beginning of the UST pro-
gram and had great respect for each
other's abilities.
"I have the answer, but it's not
what you think. I've finally figured
out the problem. The reason we're
not getting any answers is that we're
looking in all the wrong places with
all the wrong tools. If you want to
really know which UST component
has failed, you can't go at it with a
backhoe any more than a coroner can
do an autopsy with a chain saw. We
need to think-in terms of crime scenes
rather than demolition derbies. We
need to be looking for fingerprints
and stray hairs, not the getaway car."
"You've been reading too many
whodunits," interjected the Chief,
interested but still not convinced that
he was going to hear an answer.
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
"Yes, six," replied the Inspector,
"Look, if you're serious about getting
quantitative answers, it's not going to
happen overnight. Here's what we
need to do. We need to identify our
questions and carefully define the
kind of data that we need to answer
our questions. We have to figure out
how to get quality data, go out and
get it, review it to see if it's any good,
and then look at it to see what it's
telling us. We need a Quality Assur-
ance Project Plan, a QAPP. I know it
sounds bureaucratic, and I had to
wade through a pile of jargon to fig-
ure it out, but this is a concept with
some meat to it. If you want answers,
this is how to get them. I've got to
run to meet a contractor, but here are
my thoughts. See what you think."
With that, he headed out the door.
The Chief reluctantly picked up
the few pages, and this is what he
read.
A PLAN TO FIND THE
SOURCE(S) OF AN
UST RELEASE
• Step One: Define the ques-
tions that we are trying to
answer.
We can gather data 'til the cows
come home, but how will we know we
have the answers unless we are very
clear about the questions. The ques-
tions, as I see them, are as follows:
• Which components of today's
UST systems are responsible for
releases into the environment and
how frequently do they fail?
• Why did these components fail?
• Did release detection find the
release? Why or why not?
• Step Two: Define the types of
data required to answer the
questions.
The types of data (listed in the order
that they might be gathered) that are
useful in answering these questions
include but are not limited to:
• Review all available records.
Look carefully at leak detection
records, inventory records, main-
tenance records, repair records.
It may be that the leak has
already been detected and
repaired before the regulator
ever appears on site to try to
track down the , source of a
release. Have leak-detection
equipment (e.g., ATGs, line leak
detectors) checked out to be
sure that they are operating
properly and can detect the
required leak rate.
• Make a visual observation of
the operating system. Many
leaks can be observed with a
simple visual investigation of
the dispenser and submersible
pump sump (while it is operating)
before anything has been dis-
turbed. If a leak is observed but
its exact origin cannot be pin-
pointed, drain the piping, pres-
surize the system with nitrogen,
and conduct a soap test to pin-
point the defect. Document the
defect with pictures and a
detailed description.
• Tightness test the piping sys-
tem. If no leaks can be observed
in the piping, conduct a standard
piping tightness test. Use a pip-
ing test that uses a threshold of
.01 gph. Conduct a tightness test
even if leaks are found in the
observable portions of the liquid-
carrying system—there could be
multiple leaks. If piping is double
walled, air test the secondary
piping and water test the dis-
penser and piping sumps.
• Locate the approximate re-
lease point. If tightness testing
indicates a release that is not
visible without excavation, con-
duct a helium test to locate the
approximate point of the release.
• Excavate with care. Saw cut
and remove paving. Do not use a
jackhammer! Excavate with a
hand shovel, then carefully with
a hand trowel as you get close to
the piping. If piping is backfilled
in gravel, use a heavy-duty shop-
type vacuum to clear away the
backfill immediately adjacent to
the piping.
• Conduct a nitrogen/soap test.
When the area of the release is
uncovered, conduct a nitrogen/
soap test of the uncovered pipe
to pinpoint the release.
• Document the defect with pic-
tures and a detailed descrip-
tion. Take pictures to document
the release site. Makes notes of
all surrounding conditions (e.g.,
backfill, proximity of other com-
ponents such as electrical con-
duit, other piping runs, grade
stakes).
• If piping is tight, proceed to
investigate the tank. Conduct a
tightness test—one you have
confidence in. Test the spill
bucket by filling it with water to
determine if delivery spills might
be contributing to the source. If
the tank is suspect, inspect it
internally, or excavate it care-
fully. When the tank is removed,
clean off all adhering soils and
arrange to have it nitrogen tested
and soaped to locate any perfo-
rations. Look especially carefully
at the bottom of the tank where
hard-to-detect internal corrosion
holes may occur in steel tanks.
Document perforations with pic-
tures and a written description.
Early in the excavation
process, examine soils around
the fill pipe and submersible
pump and all other tank-riser
pipes for evidence of contamina-
tion. Document staining or other
visible evidence with pictures
and written descriptions. Back up
with PID and laboratory samples
to document contamination.
• Step Three: Gather reliable
data.
Develop detailed protocols on steps
to follow in the investigation, including
how to document it and how to
ensure the quality of the data. Select
a few of the most experienced and
knowledgeable personnel, and desig-
nate them as an elite leak-detective
corps. Whenever a release is sus-
pected, they are to be called in imme-
diately, before evidence is disturbed
or destroyed. Provide ample class-
room and field workshops on how to
carry out the protocols.
Provide a budget so that inspec-
tors can pay for investigative proce-
dures such as tightness testing,
manual excavation, and nitrogen test-
ing—things for which the tank owner
may be unwilling to pay. Preapprove
contractors so inspectors can imme-
diately call in someone to do the
work. Resources should be ex-
pended only where a preliminary
• continued on page 4
-------
LUSTLine Bulletin 41 • June 2002
m Looking for Leaks/ram page 3
assessment indicates there is a good
chance of obtaining quality data.
• Step Four: Have an indepen-
dent review committee look at
reports submitted to determine
if data quality is adequate to
answer the questions posed.
Only reports deemed to be of accept-
able quality (the review committee
determines that a leak has been posi-
tively identified) are entered into the
database. Discard reports found to be
inadequate, but study them to deter-
mine if a change in procedures
should be made to improve data reli-
ability. The review committee should
include people versed in statistics,
knowledgeable staff, and perhaps
some stakeholders, such as tank
installers and large tank owners.
• Step Five: Analyze the data.
Study the data carefully to extract
information that answers the ques-
tions originally asked. Note that we
are only gathering data about known
failures. If we really want to get a han-
dle on leaks, we would have to do a
study involving a random sample of
operating UST systems.
SUMMARY
This is not a project for the faint of
heart. It will take a significant invest-
ment in time and expertise to develop
a project plan, let alone carry the
project through to a meaningful con-
clusion. Though everyone wants an-
swers now, the fact is we don't have
the data now, and it's going to take
considerable time to gather it. But, if
we keep doing what we've been
doing, we're going to keep getting
what we've been getting. If a nation-
wide project plan could be developed
and implemented by interested state
agencies, more data could be gath-
ered sooner.
Epiphany
The Chief laid down the report. His
brow furrowed as he sipped his cold
coffee and recognized how radical
the ideas he had just read really were.
And suddenly, it dawned on him
how dramatically times had changed.
He remembered that when he had
started in the tank business, the leak
problems were mostly pencil-sized
corrosion holes in the tanks. You
could easily spot them just by scrap-
ing the dirt off the tank after it was out
of the hole. He realized that while
everyone was pointing to the holes in
the tanks and saying, "There's the
problem," there were no doubt less-
obvious leaks that were also present
but going unnoticed. Now that corro-
sion holes were mostly a thing of the
past, the other leak culprits were get-
ting some long overdue notice.
But while the problem had now
shifted from obvious corrosion perfo-
rations to the more subtle failings of
joints and fittings, leak investigation
techniques, if applied at all, had
failed to develop. Inspectors still
tended to look in the tank excavation
for information that wasn't there.
They were looking in the dirt, when
the answers were in the equipment.
They needed to trade their backhoes
for facility paperwork, trowels,
whisk brooms, and soap solutions.
The Inspector's report made sense
to him, but he would have to sell it to
the powers that be. And he would
have to change the way his people did
business. He'd have to change a lot of
things. But what were his choices?
Bumble on into the future, fighting all
the little fires and wishing that things
would change? Or start a process that
would lead to data that would sup-
port changes that would make a dif-
ference to human health and the
environment? It seemed a no-brainer
to him, but he recognized that there
would be a lot of inertia to overcome.
But at least now he had a direction to
head in and a compass to guide him
on his journey.
Florida Launches a
Storage Tank System
Cause of Leak Study
I he Florida Department of Environmental
Protection (FLDEP) Storage Tank Regula-
tion Section has initiated a Florida Cause
of Leak Study, a joint U.S. EPA/FLDEP effort to
investigate the causes of releases from under-
ground and aboveground storage tank systems. The study will not consider
leaks from older steel tank systems that were not protected from corrosion.
Instead, it will focus on data from discharges that occurred after January 1,
1995, ensuring that only facilities that are protected from corrosion, con-
structed of corrosion-resistant materials, or that have secondary containment
are included—the state database has 6,549 post-1995 Discharge Report
Forms (DRFs).
FLDEP will hire temporary employees who are experienced County Local
Program Inspectors to perform a file review of the DRF sites, fill out the sur-
vey forms, attach supporting information, and mail the data on a monthly
basis to FLDEP. They will also investigate Incident Report Forms, which indi-
cate potential leaks. The inspectors will perform these file reviews after their
regular work hours.
The information will be scanned into the state's tanks database and will
also be transmitted on a CD to EPA on a monthly basis. EPA's contractor will
compile the information and summarize the results. This study will contribute
to EPA's UST System Evaluation initiative, and the results of the study will
help the agency make future decisions on how best to prevent and detect
releases from UST systems. FLDEP plans to use the information to assist
with rule development and program management.
The inspectors will review discharge files from nine counties, represent-
ing about 62 percent of all of the post-'95 discharges. The inspections will
take place from April 15, 2002, through August 30, 2002. For more informa-
tion, contact Marshall Mott-Smith at (850) 488-3935 H
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
Marcel's Postscript
What I have outlined here is the
basic process of defining data
quality objectives and developing a
quality assurance project plan (see
http://www.epa.gov/quality/qs-docs/
xg4-final.pdf and http://www.
epa.gov/quality/qs-docs/g5-final.pdf).
A fully developed plan would
involve much greater detail. But the
point is, data quality for UST leak-
related studies that I have reviewed
to date has been very poor. If the
questions are worth answering, then
data are worth gathering, and we
must expend the effort required to
obtain quality data. The techniques
for doing this are well defined; they
only need to be applied to the ques-
tions at hand. The goal of this article
is not to present a final solution but to
plant the seeds of quality assurance
project planning in the UST world.
Your thoughts are invited.
Many additional procedures for
finding leaks in tank systems are
described in Appendix D of Califor-
nia's "Guidelines for Investigation
and Cleanup of MTBE and Other
Ether-Based Oxygenates." (See
LUSTline#37.)m
Marcel Moreau is a nationally recog-
nized petroleum storage specialist
whose column, "Tank-nically Speak-
ing," is a regular feature of
LUSTLine. As always, we welcome
your comments and questions. If there
are technical issues that you would like
to have Marcel discuss, let him know at
marcel.moreau@juno.com.
from Robert N. Renkes, Executive Vice President, Petroleum Equipment Institute
PEI Members Weigh in on UST System Performance
The Underground Storage
Tank Branch of the Delaware
Department of Natural
Resources and Environmental
Control offered these comments
about the current status of the
state's UST program in the most
recent issue of its quarterly
newsletter, Think Tank:
Just because the tanks have the
equipment that is needed to meet the
regulations doesn't mean that the
equipment is being maintained, or
that the equipment is operated prop-
erly. Upgraded tanks can leak, too,
so... no, we cannot rest on our lau-
rels. Now we must make sure that
operating UST systems have the
equipment they need and that they
are maintained and operated in a
manner that complies with the reg-
ulations.
So what are the regulators in
Delaware and other states likely to
find when they check to see how
the new tank systems are perform-
ing? The Petroleum Equipment
Institute (PEI) was wondering the
same thing when the organization
surveyed a representative sample
of its members in May. An average
of the responses received from 28
members operating in 45 states is
shown below. For purposes of this
survey, a leak was defined as a visi-
ble wetness due to petroleum out-
side of the primary containment
system (e.g., tank, pipe, dispenser,
pump).
If you opened 100 dispenser cabinets
at operating facilities, how many
times would you find leaks in the fol-
lowing equipment?
Impact valves 8
Unions 16
Filters 7
Meters 9
Solenoid valves 5
Other 2
If you opened 100 submersible pump
sumps, how many times would you
find leaks in the following equipment?
Functional element 5
Base of line leak detector 6
Line leak detector vent tube 6
Packer 0-ring 7
Union 8
Swing joint 5
Flex connector 4
Ball valve 2
Other 1
If you conducted 100 piping tightness
tests of FIBERGLASS piping, how
many leaks in each of the following
would you expect to find between the
impact valve and the submersible
pump? (Do not include any leak areas
already described above.)
The piping itself 1
The piping joints 6
Flex connectors 3
If you conducted 100 piping tightness
tests of FLEXIBLE piping, how many
leaks in each of the following would
you expect to find between the impact
valve and the submersible pump? (Do
not include any leak areas already
described above.)
The piping itself 1
The piping joints 7
Flex connectors 3
With regard to secondary containment
systems, if you tested 100 of each of
the following components (water test
for piping and dispenser sumps, 5 psi
air test for piping) how many of each
type would FAIL the test?
Piping sumps 39
Dispenser sumps 33
Secondary piping 19
When the number of reported
leaks in the dispensers and sub-
mersible pumps are considered
together with the failure rate of the
dispenser and piping sumps, it
seems likely that a good number of
petroleum delivery and storage
systems are not tight and could be
leaking product into the ground.
The industry is close to getting the
job done, but if s not there yet. •
-------
LUSTLine Bulletin 41 • June 2002
"We've Shown '6m Our Bocks
Long Cnough!"
It's Time to Redediccite Ourselves
to Tough Enforcement
byG. Scott Deshefy
n pundit on the radio recently described the
early 21st century—and I paraphrase a bit—as
a time of smart bombs and stupid politics.
UUhlle unworthy of comparison with Dicken's "best of
times and worst of times," the remark, nonetheless,
made me reflect on the social changes that I have wit-
nessed In the last 50 years, some of which may be
attributable to the dilemma that Marcel Moreau
described in his March 2002 LUSTLine article, "Of
Square Pegs and Round Tanks." That dilemma, the
horns of which critically gore our LIST programs, can best
be described as operator ineptitude (if not indiffer-
ence).
Seventeen years into the LIST regulatory process,
you would think that the way to the summit of UST com-
pliance would be less daunting. But I can't help thinking
that a lack of enforcement conviction over these many
years has made the slope treacherous and sheer, fl
decided overemphasis on "compliance assistance" has kept us tumbling back to base cc^rano7so^ologically7o"pefator
ineptitude may be symptomatic of a pandemic disease—a growing lack of critical thinking and a shirking of individual
responsibility. I shall try to piece together what I consider the root causes of this problem and offer some possible solutions.
The Guy with His Name
on the Sign
When I was a youngster in the 1950s,
heroes were a mainstay of our cul-
ture. We had our bigger-than-life
TV, movie, and sports heroes, and
we had our everyday local heroes,
\vhom we all knew and looked up
to. Even the local mechanic was
something of a hero in those days of
tight communities. Everyone knew
him by his first name. He sold penny
candy and nickel baseball cards to
the kids. His soda cooler stocked a
few big names, and for the connois-
seur, one or two exotic pops, such as
Fox Spring's birch beer.
When the mechanic in my town
pulled, a transmission, locals gath-
ered around him like the disciples of
Socrates. He rarely stood behind the
counter. Bells, triggered by cars at the
pumps, summoned this genie of
interminably greased hands from his
magic lamp of automobile hoods and
hydraulic lifts. Despite the interrup-
tions, he politely greeted each cus-
tomer, pumped gas, checked the oil,
cleaned the windshield and rear win-
dow, and made correct change with-
out the aid of a computer.
The gas station owner of the '50s
was (usually) not a Rhodes scholar,
but his mechanical expertise was
often genuine and highly respected.
He alone was responsible for a busi-
ness that spanned his lifetime. The
metal sign swinging squeakily in the
wind bore his name.
These stations of bygone days
were not the namesakes of their dis-
tributors; they were called Ziggy's, or
Gene's Garage, or Ski's. Their bold
painted lettering proclaimed a certain
sense of owner responsibility—an
unwritten guarantee for work per-
formed and fairness of price.
Granted, things weren't all
peaches and cream—waste disposal
practices often meant tossing or
pouring materials out the back door,
particularly those chemicals that
seemed to dematerialize into the
reeky, petroleum-stained soils. Loss
of product from a tank was strictly an
inventory issue, even when neigh-
bors began noticing a sheen on the
pond. But in the '50s and well into
the '60s, one man was all things in the
gasoline business—owner, operator,
mechanic, gasoline attendant, book-
keeper. And that guy was the fellow
with his name on the sign.
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
Transition to Estrangement
I'm not sure when the cataclysm hit,
exactly. The cultural climate started
to change, I suppose, during the late
'50s and '60s, when the number of
cars on our highways increased dra-
matically. At the gas station we
started to see the young assistant,
who was given the tasks of pumping
gas, wiping windshields, and chang-
ing oil, but little beyond that. The
Ziggys, Skis, and Genes were still on
the premises working on the cars,
keeping the books—ultimately
accountable.
The asteroid sealing the fates of
these grimy pillars of our Cenozoic
communities hit sometime in the late
1970s, just before the "me" genera-
tion was upon us. Baseball cards shot
up to 50 cents a pack and sold among
the milk, bread, beer, cigarettes, and
a growing a list of groceries.
Out of necessity, people began
pumping their own gas. "Atten-
dants" stayed behind counters
changing money. Windshields were,
more often than not, left to their own
metaphoric obscurity. The focus had
shifted to merchandise on shelves,
not gasoline dispensing or auto
repairs. Owners and operators sud-
denly took divergent evolutionary
paths. They ceased to be the same
animal. Ziggy's road sign was
replaced with a corporate logo.
As facility owners became
increasingly distanced from the day-
to-day operations of their gasoline
storage, accountability went by the
wayside. Legal firms represented
owners now. Faces became unfamil-
iar. The person behind the counter
selling junk food had no investment
in the gas station, no apprenticeship
at stake, no reputation to protect, no
desire to know the first names of his
customers. It was as if the heart had
gone out of responsibility and com-
munity, and we as UST regulators
were left to reap the consequences of
that estrangement.
This time of social transition was
really the start of operator ineptitude.
It's not that the Ziggys and Genes'
and Skis were sophisticated in their
gasoline inventory controls and pale-
olithic leak detection, but at least they
looked critically at the books from
time to time and performed the nec-
essary math to see if product was
being lost—less to protect the envi-
ronment perhaps than to protect
themselves from the dishonest dis-
tributor or the clandestine filling of
some teenager's jalopy. But they had
to rely on themselves—their own
stick measurements and simple
math—to make that determination.
With the advent of minimarts
came the parallel evolution of the
pocket calculator and digital
watches. Gas station operators and
all of the rest of us were relieved of
the responsibility of simple calcula-
tions and the privilege of thinking for
ourselves. We learned to respond to
the spin of the sound bite and elec-
tronically enumerated dials. We now
trust the "decisions" of machines,
eschewing intellectual exercise—crit-
ical analysis atrophies, indifference
bloats.
As facility owners became
I
Increasingly distanced from the day-
l, to-day operations of their gasoline
Ifir 1
storage, accountability went by the
yayside. Faces became unfamiliar.
The person behind the counter had
J1-TL
tjio investment in the gas station, no
- apprenticeship at stake, no
jSreputation to protect, no desire to
know the first names of his
fcustomers. It was as if the heart had
gone out of responsibility and
community, and we as UST
regulators were left to reap the
$ consequences of that estrangement.
I
I
I
Back to the Future?
So operator ineptitude is par for the
course. And, as we can't go back to
the future, tinker a bit, and make that
transition to the new reality work
better, we've got to recognize that
some serious behavioral repair is in
order.
But with technologies that have
increased the precision of measure-
ments of product levels and alarms
designed to identify an abnormal loss
or gain, I fear that today's UST opera-
tors have been lulled into a false
sense of security. What's the point of
taking time to critically examine the
printouts of an ATG when the prior-
ity is selling pretzels? Can there
really be a problem if the alarm
doesn't go off? (Or what's the point
of smelling smoke if the smoke detec-
tor's silent?) Furthermore, as I've
suggested, analysis of ATG readouts
requires an intellectual acumen that
for many of us is near vestigial. Fur-
thermore, does anybody care?
If we are going to do behavioral
repair work, we'll need to revert back
to ye olde sense of responsibility.
Operators must first be willing to
take the responsibility for consis-
tently conducting UST system analy-
ses. Second, they must be trained to
perform the analyses with precision.
Third, and most important, they
must trust their own analytical skills
over the presumed infallibility of the
machines.
Failure on any one of these
counts will result in the shortcomings
we find in our inspections—either
the ATG data are not analyzed prop-
erly at the site or responsibility is
taken away from the operator alto-
gether, and ATG records are auto-
matically forwarded to a central
office for a cursory in vitro review.
Such reviews provide ownership the
legal buffers with which to insulate
themselves from enforcement and
buy time to get records "straightened
out" when releases occur. But when-
ever ATG measurements are not ana-
lyzed in situ, mitigative timeframes
suffer—deliveries are made to leak-
ing systems.
Timely leak detection can only be
achieved if operators are thoroughly
trained and held culpable for identi-
fying suspected releases on-site.
Furthermore, operators must be em-
powered by their employers to stop
deliveries and initiate corrective
actions when a suspected release has
been identified. This may be too
much to ask of individuals who,
unlike the Ziggys and Genes and Skis
of yore, have no investment in the
success or failure of the business,
much less overriding concerns for
protecting the health of human and
nonhuman elements of the ecological
community.
With frequencies of operator
turnover somewhere between 30 and
• continued on page 8
-------
LUSTLine Bulletin 41 • June 2002
m Tough Enforcement from page 7
60 days, can we expect UST owners
to provide necessary training for the
transients at the cash register? If the
answer to this question is a concilia-
tory NO, then we are in trouble. We
must be cognizant that if we lower
the compliance bar, a portion of the
regulated community will feel no
urgency to jump.
The tie minimus Syndrome
The adaptiveness of lawyers to
exploit regulatory loopholes aside,
we as regulators have created an
atmosphere in which owners of USTs
have developed de minimis strategies
for meeting the bare-bones legal
requirements necessary to pump gas
and maximize profits from the least
amount of capital expenditure. While
I am thrilled to find the occasional
station whose owner has looked
beyond the cheapest ways to achieve
baseline compliance—stations with
multiple leak detection apparatus,
redundancy in alarms, and fail-safe
mechanisms to rapidly identify a
loss—I also concede that such sta-
tions and station owners are few and
far between.
All animals—our own species
included—by instinct or reason,
make decisions about cost versus
benefit for every type of activity. If
the energetic investments (costs) for
defense of territory or for a particular
foraging pattern exceed the energetic
benefits derived from that behavior,
then the individual's survival is com-
promised. If biological cost exceeds
biological benefit, then the behavior
has to be modified for the organism
to survive and, in the biological cur-
rency of genetic fitness, stay in the
black.
While de minimis approaches to
UST compliance are likewise under-
standable in terms of natural selec-
tion, in terms of regulatory selection
we are responsible for creating a cul-
tural habitat in which benefits
derived from failing to comply with
UST regulations typically exceed the
comparative costs. In evolutionary
terms, we have created a selective
pressure that rewards noncompli-
ance.
Costs for UST upgrades and
sophisticated leak detection instru-
ments are high, penalties imposed for
8
failing to make upgrades are low, if
imposed at all. The odds of being
caught, particularly for operational
noncompliance, are slim to none.
Take, for example, the inability of
most states to routinely inspect all
UST facilities within a reasonable
period of time, a function of UST
numbers versus numbers of inspec-
tors. Having run an enforcement pro-
gram in southern New England
without state funding other than the
minimum match to keep federal
baseline grants .coming in, no one
knows this frustration better than I.
' Iri evolutionary terms, we have
'cjjateai a selective pressure that
" ' il »<«i ifl
While staffs for state cleanup
funds have increased severalfold in
Connecticut, commitment to pollu-
tion prevention (i.e., UST enforce-
ment) has remained stagnant. Four
people comprised our UST enforce-
ment program in 1985; four people
comprise the program in 2002. We
started with over 43,000 registered
tanks in Connecticut in 1985 and
have closed out nearly 25,000, a Her-
culean effort by a handful of people.
But the task that now lies before us is
even more intimidating.
We know of nearly 18,000 com-
mercial tanks still in service in Con-
necticut (over 7,200 operational sites),
and we average (in addition to our
other duties) only 320 inspections per
year. If I were an UST owner or oper-
ator in Connecticut, would I lose
sleep over being out of compliance
with leak detection requirements?
For the average violator of UST
requirements in Connecticut, insom-
nia is probably not pervasive.
Furthermore, while the anti-
quated tank problem has always
been a stationary target, operational
compliance is not. Once antiquated
tanks are closed, they are gone for
good. Leak detection systems, on the
other hand, may be legally operated
one minute, then grossly out of com-
pliance the next—a swarm of fireflies
in the night, on again, off again.
Operators, too, are in a constant state
of flux, and neither of these problems
is limited to Connecticut.
The Economics of
Noncompliance
To further complicate matters, we
have created an environment in
which UST owners not only discount
the probability of an inspection, but,
once inspected, the amount of any
civil penalty is miniscule when com-
pared to the economic benefits
derived from an illegally operated
tank.
Even after leakage is discovered
and remediation begun, cash flow is
seldom a problem. Once again, we as
regulators have had much to do with
that. Granted, cleanup funds have led
to better reporting and accelerated
identification and cleanup of UST
releases. But by taking the financial
burdens of those cleanups off the
shoulders of UST owners, we have
eliminated (or at least severely
reduced given a contaminated sta-
tion's downtime) a major deterrent to
UST noncompliance. This is particu-
larly true of cleanup accounts that
make no correlation between size of
award and degree of noncompliance
as a proximate cause of release.
Before cleanup funds, UST own-
ers with poor management practices
and histories of major or frequent
releases were limited by competitive
exclusion. They could not afford to
both clean up their messes and stay
in business pumping gasoline and
selling cigarettes. One edge of the
cleanup fund sword has been that
UST owners are now less likely to
walk away from contaminated sites.
The other edge has been the owner's
disincentive to spend money on com-
pliance when golden geese around
the country lay their cleanup reim-
bursement eggs regardless.
The Zero Tolerance Approach
So, do we raise the white flag and say
to the owners/ops, "Just tell us your-
selves if you're in compliance. We'll
believe anything you say so long as
we can report an improvement in
numbers—after all, perception is
what it's all about. The heck with
reality, pollution prevention, cleaner
drinking water, and the investment
of 17 years"?
Well, my Hungarian-Czech her-
itage suggests strongly that we do
otherwise. But do what? How do we
rededicate ourselves to wage war
against operator ineptitude and
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
owner indifference? And we must
wage war. We must recognize that
we are not in the business of compli-
ance assistance and pandering to the
blind hope of voluntary compliance.
As a nation, we have declared war on
poverty and drugs but never so per-
vasive an environmental threat as
USTs.
It is high time we took a zero tol-
erance approach to violations of these
environmental laws. And that first
step in a long road to victory is to
guarantee the regulated community
that civil penalties will result from
every UST infraction documented.
In Connecticut, we have had great
success with an "expedited consent
order," complete with civil penalties,
sent to every respondent for whom
'98 deadline violations have been
verified. To date, there have been
no exceptions. This approach, at
least in principle, simulated fed-
eral field citations, a necessary
adaptation on our part to cope
with the high volume of '98
deadline violations anticipated
from our database.
The "trench warfare" that is
all too often the case with con-
ventional consent orders (COs) f|
would have tolled a death knell
for correcting any appreciable
number of the '98 deadline vio-
lations. With a staff of four,
such drawn-out battles were
not an option. We had to adapt
and did so by developing a
"cookie-cutter" consent order,
the boilerplate of which was
limited to '98 deadline viola-
tions and closure requirements.
With penalties of $3,500
(roughly comparable to legal
retainers), the financial cost to sign
the CO, pay the smaller civil penalty,
and undertake corrective action was
smaller than the costs of legal com-
bat, particularly to the steps of the
attorneys general and the imposition
of much higher civil penalties and
punitive consequences.
Largely because of the deterrent
of our expedited COs and promises
kept of penalties without exception,
we have gotten very close to 100 per-
cent compliance with the '98 deadline
in Connecticut. But we also have had
the luxury of a database with which
to target that small and static subset
of the tank universe (i.e., antiquated
USTs for which we had no legal con-
firmation of closure). As discussed
previously, we don't have that lux-
ury with operational compliance.
And Onward to Operational
Compliance
Given that sites may be found in
compliance with leak detection
requirements one minute and out of
compliance the next, the entire uni-
verse of operational tanks is always
at large. Databases have no relevance
here. Furthermore, investing pre-
cious inspectional resources to main-
tain a database on operational
compliance may be ludicrous—like
painting a whirlwind.
Also troubling is that leak detec-
tion violations are so numerous and
so dynamic that even specially
designed, expedited COs may be too
time-consuming to keep pace with
inspectional caseloads. Furthermore,
some states may be unwilling to
invest the time and resources neces-
sary to develop and seek legal
approvals for expedited COs when
the priority at this juncture is crank-
ing out inspections.
Given that the Connecticut expe-
dited CO was designed to simulate
the efficiency and speed of federal
field citations, wouldn't it be helpful
if states were "duly deputized" with
the authority to use federal field
citations for minor infractions of UST
operational compliance? The TSCA/
PCB program of which I was a part in
the 1980s issued federal credentials to
all state PCB inspectors, in essence
lengthening the federal arm of the
law.
I propose that the same policy be
broadened for state UST inspectors
with the added authority to directly
issue federal field citations. Failures
on the part of UST owners/ops to
fully comply with federal field cita-
tions, issued by state personnel,
would be handled by states' attor-
neys. This would be accomplished by
memorandums of agreement be-
tween states and EPA and as an inte-
gral part of grant commitments.
States could also reserve the right to
use their own enforcement tools (e.g.,
expedited COs) for substantial viola-
tions of operational requirements,
where found.
Still, conventional means of
expedited enforcement, whether
expedited COs or federal field cita-
tions, simply do not carry enough
wallop (cost) to deter owners from
reaping the greater economic bene-
fit of failing to invest in opera-
tional compliance—properly
monitoring ATGs and line
leak detectors; investing
time, energy, and
money into training
ephemeral person-
nel; and paying oper-
ators enough wages
to keep them on
, board for more than
30 days.
To enforce opera-
tional compliance,
day in and day out,
there must be a means
of penalizing violators
that is both expeditious (in order not
to compromise the number of inspec-
tions due to red tape) and that carries
a lot of clout, particularly for major
operational violations. Then and only
then will we get the owners' attention
and conquer operator ineptitude.
One approach is to inspect for
operational compliance every appli-
cant to a UST cleanup fund. Any-
thing less than full operational
compliance both before and after a
release would be grounds for rejec-
tion of a claim, either partially or in
totality. Is full operational compli-
ance too much to ask of an owner
• continued on page 10
-------
LUSTLine Bulletin 41 • June 2002
m Tough Enforcement from page 9
who asks the public to help pay for
his mistakes? Tank funds also could
be off-limits to any owner/operator
with a history of major releases. A
"three (or possibly two) strikes
you're out" policy to limit reim-
bursable cleanups would certainly
bolster financial incentives not to pol-
lute. [The Catch-22 here is that the
mom-and-pop owners (a rare bird,
but still extant) may not clean up a
major release in a timely manner if
ineligible to access the fund.]
I suspect that the most effective
mechanism for enforcing UST opera-
tional compliance would be the
authority to lock up fill pipes when-
ever significant or major leak detec-
tion violations are discovered.
Unfortunately, many states have had
difficulty in obtaining this kind of
authority except in cases of dear and
present danger—emergencies usu-
ally limited to threats to public health
and safety outside the scope of
"mere" environmental degradation.
Again, I urge U.S. EPA to con-
sider the option of seeking these
authorities and stopping deliveries to
any tanks identified as grossly out of
compliance with leak detection
requirements. Once again, the agency
should explore the feasibility of dele-
gating that authority to state inspec-
tors with the provision that tanks
would be shut down until total oper-
ational compliance had been demon-
strated.
Because the number of UST
inspections performed in a given
year by a given state will always be a
function of the number of inspectors,
we need state and federal funding
that will guarantee that every UST in
the nation is inspected at a frequency
that "encourages" better rates of
compliance. If states can spend tens
of millions of dollars annually to
clean up UST petroleum releases,
then it is logical for every state to at
least commit a few hundred thou-
sand dollars to prevent those pollu-
tion events from occurring. The
"Chafee Bill" (Senate #1850) is a step
in the right direction and that dia-
logue is encouraging, but...we'll just
have to see, won't we?
And lef s not kid ourselves. Sub-
stantially increased enforcement
staffs, capable of inspecting every
UST once every two years, in and of
10
themselves are not enough. Two
years of potential noncompliance
between inspections and enforce-
ment actions is far from acceptable
for leak detection, especially when
UST operator turnover is every two
months and many stations pump
over 30,000 gallons of product a
week.
The Fast-Food Paradigm
Oddly enough, we may yet have a
solution to operator ineptitude to
complement higher frequencies of
inspections and rapid-fire enforce-
ment actions if we look to the fast-
food industry. For the record, I wish
to state that I am uncomfortable
drawing this parallel. The fast-food
business represents to me the antithe-
sis of cruelty-free living, good health,
sound environmentalism, and eco-
logically efficient, ethical sources of
highly paid troubleshooters going
"tore to store to check
HJMMMiri::*i J 4 rTa,iiiJfM l'iiT»|i'il«»™ri™i lftj~Jjj&rBS*~",•--Mi-tjan-ijn i*iffl
Mra^sandjsati^ate equipment,'
"'"" " n'"'" """"" '"""" ""'""'""TJ.SSff JlJ^SS*"rlffli?'(
1FIV/70 vist every UST facility at least
ff ' :: ....... '^ W W?mfTOWri'iW*#M =t4w » . w*^,*
j>lilLi"(ii, ff ...... , ....... lill'MB! ll !i l' *hW'*llllli,1,l«,l|liHlj'li:,l'*«!i » ' '(li-SHI* ! ' ! UT !'*lf .' \ ! (', • WflJ^Ww^ J't* -' *S&i;*™! •
" :,:,. ...... fl?cej«?r ^k to guarantee
protein. But the fast-food industry,
which suffers from the same mini-
mum-wage turnover problems that
compound our operator ineptitude
dilemma, is nonetheless a stellar
example of consistency of product
from store to store to store. Why?
Well, lefs go back again 40 or 50
years, to a time when the fast-food
industry was a newly emerging crea-
ture—a low-priced, corporate critter
competing with the well-established
Jurassic giants of car-hops, family
restaurants, and mom-and-pop din-
ers. The mobilized environment was
ripe for evolution, but competition
among newly emerging forms was
stiff. Those franchises that did not
provide consistency of product dur-
ing the nickel-burger, cutthroat com-
petitions of the '50s and early '60s
quickly fell off the map.
Among the survivors you will
find techniques for preparing foods
precisely the same way and with
remarkable consistency no matter
which franchise you visit. This was
accomplished in two very important
ways. First, the frying process
became mechanized around 1970.
Where originally a young man or
woman was responsible for making
visual judgements as to whether a
product was cooked to corporate
specifications, that humanly intuitive
process was replaced by the cold,
hard stainless steel precision of tem-
perature probes, timing devices, and
alarms.
Second, all the major fast-food
chains employ professional "trou-
bleshooters," men and women paid
handsome salaries to visit each store
at least once a week to verify consis-
tency of products, look at the inven-
tories of sales, count discarded food
items (e.g., stale buns), and carefully
evaluate the machinery that elimi-
nates guesswork by the here-today,
gone-tomorrow crews.
The troubleshooters, on at least a
weekly basis, see to it that probes and
timers, heat sensors, and refrigerated
components function at the stan-
dards set by teams of quality control
people hundreds of miles away. The
parallels I'm about to draw with
ATGs, UST operators, and proper
UST inventory control are self-evi-
dent.
I agree with Marcel Moreau's
premise that, just as the fast-food
industry has its highly paid trou-
bleshooters going from store to store
to check operations and calibrate
equipment, we, too, for the same rea-
sons, need certified, professional tank
operators who visit every UST facil-
ity at least once per week to guaran-
tee compliance. This could easily be
accomplished by the majors and job-
bers in the petroleum industry and
by larger businesses and municipali-
ties, as well.
Trained professionals could be
put on the payroll for clusters of five
or six tank facilities within the
owner's jurisdiction. Each day, one of
the five or six facilities would be thor-
oughly investigated for total opera-
tional compliance until the entire loop
has been completed during the course
of a work week. That weekly routine
is repeated ad infinitum, just as in the
case of the fast-food industry.
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
T?or sm.gle mom.-arvd.-pop facili-
ties and for very small businesses, the
cost of certified, professional tank
operators giving the place an opera-
tional compliance once-over every
week can be ameliorated by forming
cooperatives. Then and only then, in
a synergy with enforcement mea-
sures previously discussed, will we
finally turn the tide in this 17-year
struggle. The most expeditious
means to this end (and time is of the
essence) is by federal regulation.
Once federal or state require-
ments were to kick in, certified, pro-
fessional tank operators and
associated training programs for
accreditation should become green
industries. Additionally, as Marcel
suggests, state boards consisting of
regulators and industry professionals
could police the certification stan-
dards. During the interim, checklists
and guidance documents could serve
as an intermediate, albeit limited,
stopgap phase until the transition to
certified, professional tank operators
was complete.
We Won't Succeed with
Good Intentions
As an animal behaviorist and mid-
dle-aged cynic, I do know one thing
with certainty: Some people don't
like to make sacrifices or to be incon-
venienced for the sake of a better
world—even if the benefits are theirs
to reap. Thus, Americans are rarely
asked to be inconvenienced until
catastrophe comes knocking at
the door.
As Paul and Anne Ehrlich
discuss in their 1996 book,
Betrayal of Science and Reason,
biology may explain this
very well. Our animal
species has evolved to
respond to dramatic and
immediate threats to life and
wellness. Our nervous systems
are designed to make us jump at
the sound of rattlesnakes' warn-
ings or cringe at the thought of
bites from Sydney funnel-web spi-
ders. But that same nervous sys-
tem is ill-adapted to discern the
subtler environmental problems—
the slowly developing, large-scale
venoms of contaminated waters
and tainted air.
The Ehrlichs quite properly
have coined the term "brownlash"
to describe the backlash of political or
corporate contrarians against "green"
policies. They also conclude that we
are at the Dunkirk of global environ-
mental degradation. We,,had better
dig in or elsex ^ *-
Whether that is true, or whether
we are more accurately stalled on the
beaches of Normandy, I don't know.
But it seems to me that we'd better
proceed with a sense of environmen-
tal urgency. We'd better not relax
environmental regulations or concede
leak detection requirements to opera-
tor ineptitude or trust the integrity of
tank owners to let us know the score.
We'd better not rest our laurels on
good intentions. We must demand
more, rather than less, from people
storing thousands of gallons of toxic
chemicals underground. As Errol
Flynn shouted to his desperately out-
numbered troops in the movie Rocky
Mountain, just before their last, gallant
charge: "We've shown 'em our backs
long enough!" •
Scott Deshejy regulates USTs as a
Supervising Environmental Analyst
and Emergency Scientific Support
Coordinator for the State of Connecti-
cut. He is also a biologist and behav-
ioral ecologist. This article was written
by the author in his private capacity,
and the conclusions and opinions
drawn are solely those of the author.
PEI's RP for Testing
Electrical Continuity
of Fuel-Dispensing
Hanging Hardware
Available
PEI's 20-page Recommended Proce-
dure for Testing Electrical Continuity
of Fuel-Dispensing Hanging Hard-
ware (PE1/RP400-02) describes a
standard procedure for testing elec-
trical continuity of hanging hardware
associated with petroleum dispens-
ing systems. The test establishes
that an electrical bond sufficient to
dissipate electrical charges between
the nozzle and the dispenser exists.
The document was developed
because very few written continuity
testing procedures existed, and the
procedures that were available were
not universally followed and
accepted.
The procedure described in the
publication should be followed
whenever testing for continuity is
appropriate. The document explains
how to test safely and accurately, if
and when a need to have the equip-
ment tested develops. Such circum-
stances include installing or
replacing any hanging hardware or
component, after a drive-off, and/or
as part of a scheduled maintenance
program.
The document includes sections
on definitions, when to test, testing
equipment, safety, initial test proce-
dure, pass/fail criterion, locating the
problem if the initial test fails, cor-
recting the problem, and documenta-
tion. It also contains two illustrations
and 13 photographs. Material in the
appendix includes a sample form to
record continuity test data, a pictorial
summary of the continuity test field
procedures, and a publication refer-
ence. Each copy is accompanied by a
laminated card with full-color pic-
tures that summarizes the test pro-
cedure in eight steps.
The single-copy price for
RP400-02 is $75 (including shipping
and handling) for nonmembers of
PEL You can order copies online at
www.pei.org/catalog. •
11
-------
LUSTLine Bulletin 41 • June 2002
ICBO to Develop an UST
Operator Certification Exam
by Lynn A. Woodard
Now that the 1998 deadline for
UST systems to meet up-
grade, closure, or new UST
system standards is behind us, and
most systems have all the new bells
and whistles required to alert facility
owners/operators when a problem
occurs, it is time to upgrade or replace
existing operators where necessary.
If you attended the UST/LUST
National Conference last March or
have been paying attention to the last
couple of editions of LUSTLine, it is
abundantly clear that the weak link
in the UST regulatory landscape is
the UST owners/operator knowl-
edge gap regarding technical stan-
dards and reporting requirements.
In an effort to provide industry
and regulators alike with some mea-
sure of confidence that the person
hired to oversee the operation and
reporting requirements for an UST
facility has a minimum level of com-
petence, the existing IFCI (Interna-
tional Fire Code Institute) UST
Advisory Committee petitioned the
ICBO (International Conference of
Building Officials, the parent com-
pany of IFCI) to design and adminis-
ter a certification examination
specifically for UST operators. The
proposal to design and administer an
UST operators examination was pre-
sented to the ICBO Board of Directors
and received approval and funding.
Exam Committee Formed
The next step was to put an exam
design committee together to repre-
sent both the regulators and own-
ers/operators. While we were unable
to obtain the diversity of owners and
operators we were seeking, we were
nevertheless able to establish a very
competent committee. The committee
consists of regulators from Oregon,
California, and New Hampshire;
facility owners from Rhode Island
and New Hampshire; an installation
contractor from New Hampshire; and
professional exam writers from
Alabama and California.
12
On March 25-27, 2002, the com-
mittee met for the first time in Man-
chester, New Hampshire, to define its
goals and objectives, receive instruc-
tion on the exam development
process, review existing exam ques-
tions already in the data bank, and
assign tasks to committee members.
At that meeting, the committee deter-
mined that the exam should be writ-
ten for the facility operator, who may
or may not be the owner of the facil-
ity. The "operator" was defined as
follows:
The individual designated to be in
control of, or having responsibility
for, the operation of a UST system
and has responsibility for the oper-
ation and maintenance of the sys-
tem in a manner to ensure that it is
in compliance with applicable state
and federal regulations and indus-
try standards to protect the health,
safety, and welfare of the public
and environment.
An Industry of Trained
Operators?
It would be nice to think that when
the exam becomes available enough
states will adopt it into their certifica-
tion programs to provide a demand
for highly trained and knowledge-
able operators. And it is important to
note that a certification exam is only
one component (the final compo-
nent) in meeting this goal. The up-
front training and education of
owners/operators is another very
important component.
Operator certification could in
turn be a first step in establishing an
industry of trained operators to over-
see the operation and maintenance of
the nation's UST facilities (much the
same as with drinking water and
wastewater treatment plant opera-
tors). If this would occur, we may be
able to turn the corner on the disap-
pointing compliance status that cur-
rently exists nationwide.
Our second committee meeting is
slated to be held in Salt Lake City on
June 20-22, 2002. If a third meeting is
required, and it probably will be, it
will be scheduled for later this sum-
mer. ICBO experts on exam writing
will then do whatever is necessary to
make the exam available by the early
part of 2003. n
Lynn A. Woodard, P.E., is Supervisor
of the Oil Compliance and Initial
Response Section in the Waste
Management Division of the New
Hampshire Department of Environ-
mental Services and is serving on the
ICBO Operator Certification Exam
Committee. He can be reached at
lwoodard@des.state.nh.us.
LUSTLine T-Shirts
new W£C*t¥ designs
created by LUSTLine cartoonist, Hank Alto
TWO colors... red and black • TWO versions... long and short sleeve
Long sleeve $17.00 • Short sleeve $13.00
Sizes: M, L, X, XXL
TO ORBEK: Send check or money order (drawn on U.S. banks only) to:
NEIWPCC, Boott Mills South, 100 Foot of John Street, Lowell, MA 01852-1124
Tel: (978) 323-7929 • Fax: (978) 323-7919
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
Leak Prevention
by W. David McCaskill
David McCaskill is an Environmental Engineer with the Maine Department of
Environmental Protection. Tanks Down East is a regular feature o/LUSTLine.
David can be reached at David.Mccaskill@state.me.us. As always, we welcome
your comments.
When It's Hard to Take "No
for an Answer
Maine's UST Siting Law Revisited
99
I'm sitting at my desk thinking
about the recent passage of our
new UST siting law, when I get a
phone call from the owner of a chain
of C-stores in the mid-coast area. He
wants to know if the new siting law
applies to his proposed UST bulk
plant project. The site is on land that
is adjacent to one of his existing C-
stores, and the area is served by pub-
lic water. But there is a hitch; not
everyone in that neighborhood is
connected to the public water sup-
ply. In fact, there's a home within 300
feet of the proposed UST facility (we
include all tanks, piping, and dis-
pensers in the setback determina-
tion) that gets its drinking water
from an on-site well.
My painful answer to the man's
question was that if a residential well
is within 300 feet of the project, it
means a no go. He told me he
thought that Maine's siting rule was
passed to reduce the massive and
expensive cleanups needed when a
well has been impacted. His rationale
was that if there is public water
nearby, then the house with the resi-
dential well can be hooked up to that
water supply in the event of a spill.
I proposed two alternatives that
might satisfy his needs: (a) prove that
there is no hydrogeological connec-
tion between his site and the private
well or (b) connect the homeowner to
the public water supply. The first
option is a real gamble because the
whole area is shallow bedrock, a con-
dition in which everything is usually
connected to everything. As for the
second option, well, it seems the
homeowner likes his well water just
fine, thank you. (And besides, who
wants a bulk plant in his backyard!)
F-
The law and its intent seem pretty
lp clear on this—to protect against
ttacility creep. I suspect that we will
continue to see different siting
i scenarios that we never dreamed of
fanrf that owners, entrepreneurs that
I
they are, will also continue to
feu_ " * '* I
^explore ways to get around our UST
siting laws. No one likes to hear
tie word "no," .
But as time would tell, the C-store
owner had a third option
In this edition of "Tanks Down
East" I'll give you the latest on the tri-
als and tribulations of administering
our comprehensive UST siting law.
When I broke the news in LUSTLine
last year ("There Ought to Be a Law,"
Bulletin #38) I also predicted that we
might encounter some potential
problems. Well we've had some, and
wouldn't you know it, they were not
the ones we'd expected! Funny how
that works.
Maine's UST Siting Law:
A Refresher
Maine's UST siting law prohibits or
modifies the installation of UST facili-
ties in proximity of existing water
supplies (public and private wells)
and future water supplies (significant
sand and gravel aquifers). This law
went into effect in October 1, 2001,
with respect to private and public
wells. The regulations that address
the siting of USTs over aquifers, go
into effect on August 1, 2002. The sit-
ing requirements apply only to motor
fuel and bulk plant USTs and not to
the replacement or expansion of
USTs that existed at a site prior to the
implementation date. The following
is a thumbnail overview of the siting
requirements as a whole:
• Where you can't install tanks:
• Within a 300 feet of a private well,
other than the one used to supply
water to the business*
• Within 1,000 feet (or within the
"source water protection area,"
which ever is larger) of a commu-
nity water supply (municipal
well, mobile home park well, con-
dominium, etc.) or a school well*
• Over a high-yield (more than 50
gpm) sand and gravel aquifer
*The only exception is if the applicant
can prove that there is no hydrogeological
connection between the site and the
well—something that's very hard to do.
• continued on page 14
13
-------
LUSTLine Bulletin 41 • June 2002
• UST Siting Law/rom page 13
M Where you must go through a permitting
process and provide additional protection:
• Within 1,000 feet (or within the
"source water protection area,"
which ever is greater) of a tran-
sient or nontransient public water
supply
• Over a mapped moderate-yield
(between 10 and 50 gpm) sand and
gravel aquifer
The kicker with the
mapped aquifers is that in
most instances the data for
the high-yield areas comes
from the fact that someone
has drilled a real gusher in
the area, and this informa-
tion is added to the maps.
What this means is that any-
one wanting to install tanks
on a moderate-yield aquifer
would first have to plunk
down around $10,000 for a
bore hole to prove that the
mapped moderate-yield
area is not also a high-yield
area. High yield area = no
tanks.
The Political Test
During the last legislative
session, there was an
attempt to reduce the set-
back to private wells from
300 to 75 feet, if the area
was served by public water.
If the area was not served
by public water, in the
event of a release the facility
owner could agree (ahead
of time) to replace the
homeowner's water supply.
The rationale was that these
are "low-risk areas" and
there are available remedies
that would not adversely
burden our state cleanup fund.
The Maine Department of Envi-
ronmental Protection disagreed. For
one thing, we wondered about the
financial mechanism for replacing the
water supply. Our position was that
it would not be a solution if we had
to tap the state cleanup fund. Fortu-
nately, the legislature agreed.
Interestingly enough, in prepara-
tion for the debate over the adequacy
of the 75-foot setback amendment,
we initiated a study titled "Historical
Oil Contamination Travel Distances in
Groundwater at Sensitive Geological
Sites in Maine" http://www. state.
me.us/dep/rwm/usts-OilTravel.doc.
The study was based on a survey
of the documented travel distances of
Gasoline Range Organics (GRO),
Diesel Range Organics (DRO), and
MTBE and other gasoline oxygenates
at 20 percent of our 394 long-term oil-
remediation sites. The results showed
that 70 percent of the sites had petro-
Hrntn.
Where am I
gonna put
this thing?
leum contamination traveling more
than 75 feet from the source—even
the less-mobile DRO traveled more
than 75 feet from the source in 50 per-
cent of the sites.
This survey essentially validated
the 300-foot setback, in that 76 percent
of the time the 300 feet provided ade-
quate protection over a broad range
of hydrogeological conditions and
product types. Our rules have always
defined a "sensitive geological area"
to be within 300 feet of a private well
or 1,000 feet of a public water supply
or over a mapped significant sand
and gravel aquifer or recharge area. I
don't know the origin of these num-
bers, but based on our experience
they seem to work rather well.
The Technical Fix
Another larger company found itself
in this same UST-siting boat. A
homeowner's well was within 300
feet of the proposed UST site. The
company's solution to the setback
requirement was to install
underground vaulted tanks.
Unfortunately, our definition
of an UST prevents us from
calling a vaulted tank an
UST—as the vault has access
for inspecting the tank, it is
considered an AST, so wel-
come to the neighborhood!
From the get-go, we knew
that some people might go
with the obvious loophole of
the AST, as opposed to a
vaulted tank, to get around
the setback requirement. But
we also knew that this option
wouldn't be so easy because
of fire-code setback require-
ments and space limitations.
Furthermore, most owners
aren't keen about the way
ASTs "ugly up" their nice C-
stores, not to mention the
potential for vandalism, fire,
and all the other various
drawbacks. However, if a tank
were installed in a subsurface
vault (according to National
Fire Code Association [NFPA]
30A), then the major obstacle
becomes the cost of the large-
cast, in-place concrete vaults
required for each tank.
The company in this
example was considering a
new prefabricated vault/ tank
system that allows only two
inches of space between the tank
walls and the vault on all but one
end. The tank sits in the vault like a
hand in a glove, allowing the system
to be prefabricated, reducing the
amount of concrete needed, and sim-
plifying the installation—thus reduc-
ing the price (according to the
manufacturer). All the piping and
dispensers sit over the vault in a spill
containment area. On this site,
though, to keep the delivery trucks
out of the customer's way, they
14
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
would have to install three 150-foot,
double-walled offset fill lines! Except
for the need for offset fill lines, it
could be a good system.
But in my opinion a gas station is
a gas station. Whether a tank is above
or below ground, spills happen! Our
best option is to make sure the own-
ers are fully aware of what we see as
potential problems with the system.
Now That You Said No, What
Are My Options?
A couple of years ago a fellow
bought an existing oil company that
had many gas station locations with
"problems," including one space-
challenged gas station in a less than
desirable location. His plan for this
station was simple—buy the thriving
convenience store across the street
from the station and relocate his
gasoline retail operation there. This
way, his station is moved out of a
dangerous intersection and is
upgraded across the street.
There's one problem, however—
this whole area is located over a high-
yield sand and gravel aquifer. The
owner would have to buy the conve-
nience store, get a variance from the
town (as this area is not zoned for gas
stations), and fully install the UST
system before August 1,2002.
To meet that deadline he would
still have to locate the UST system
more than 300 feet from several pri-
vate wells in the area (plus obtain a
variance to site an UST within 1,000
feet of a transient public water sup-
ply). His geologist consultant did
find a location on the site—around 60
feet by 40 feet—which met the set-
back requirement. This information
was presented to us at a preapplica-
tion meeting at which no one present
felt really confident that the whole
tank, piping, and dispenser system
could be squeezed into such a small
area. The underground vaulted tanks
were mentioned but they too would
limit the layout of the facility.
Now here was a guy, thinking
he's doing the right thing, proposing
to upgrade a cramped little facility by
locating it right across the street
where, without the siting law, he
would have had more room to install
a state-of-the-art facility and also add
suds, sodas, and sandwiches to his
business. But the safest solution to
this situation would be to remove the
facility and not replace it at all over
this valuable resource. This area is
growing rapidly from rural to subur-
ban and, in my opinion, will need an
ample public water supply because
of the potential for contamination
(e.g., oil spills, septic systems) that
comes with the clustering of homes.
This is something that is beyond our
environmental rules, however, much
less the UST siting requirements. But
the deal is off for now—the guy with
the convenience store wants more
than the oil dealer is willing to pay.
Continuing Shell Games
At the time of printing we are draft-
ing an advisory opinion, at the
request of a large convenience store
operator, on whether a new UST can
be installed at an existing facility but
on a separate parcel of land that was
bought before the law went into
effect. The law and its intent seem
pretty clear on this—to protect
against facility creep. I suspect that
we will continue to see different sit-
ing scenarios that we never dreamed
of and that owners, entrepreneurs
that they are, will also continue to
explore ways to get around our UST
siting laws. No one likes to hear the
word "no." •
Photo by: Gary Robbins
Okay, what do we have here? Looks like two 10,000-gallon tanks full of petroleum product. Aargh!
If you have any UST/LUST-related snapshots from the field that you would like to share with our readers, please send them to Ellen Frye do NEIWPCC.
15
-------
LUSTLine Bulletin 41 • June 2002
STI Publications Update
The Steel Tank Institute is a trade association of aboveground and underground steel storage tank manufacturers. The Insti-
tute develops standards, recommended practices, informative articles, and other publications related to the fabrication, use, and
installation of shop-fabricated steel storage tanks. The following is a list of several ofSTI's more recently issued or revised UST
publications.
RP012-02 Recommended Practice-far Interstitial Tight-
ness Testing of Existing Underground Double Wall Steel
Tanks. The purpose of this testing procedure is to meet
the secondary containment testing requirements of the
CA SWRCB (California State Water Resources Control
Board). The practice is applicable to steel tanks built to
both the UL 58 Steel Underground Tanks for Flammable
and Combustible Liquids and UL 1746 External Corrosion
Protection Systems for Steel Underground Storage Tanks
constructions, which include:
• Type I double-wall storage tanks
• Type n double-wall storage tanks
• Jacketed secondarily contained storage tanks
The RP identifies the applicable code references of
CA Code 2637 (a), the International Fire Code (IFC),
Uniform Fire Code (UFC), and NFPA 30 regarding
secondary containment testing. It contains an explana-
tion of external hydrostatic pressure and its effect on
the pressure within the interstice or annular space.
The RP details separate procedures for testing tight-
wrap double-wall and jacketed tanks, double-wall
USTs exposed to water table, and double-wall USTs
not exposed to water table. The RP also includes a
table of recommended vacuum test pressures based
on tank size and water table height.
RP011 -01 Recommended Practice for Anchoring of Steel
Underground Storage Tanks. This recommended prac-
tice covers procedures for anchoring steel under-
ground storage tanks. It includes a table on minimum
tank burial depth, as well as general guidelines for siz-
ing, constructing, and installing deadman anchors,
concrete slab anchors, and tank anchor straps. The RP
contains recommendations for using deadman and
slab anchors, which can be used in conjunction with
the mandatory installation instructions issued with
each tank.
R972-01 Recommended Practice for the Addition of Sup-
plemental Anodes to sti-P3® USTs. On occasion, tank
owners of sti-P3 tanks find that the cathodic protec-
tion readings are more positive than the NACE-rec-
ommended -850 millivolt criterion. In this case, the
cathodic protection system must be supplemented so
that the tank continues to be protected from corrosion.
The addition of supplemental anodes can cause the
tank potential to be more negative than the recom-
mended -850 millivolt criteria. This RP only applies to
sti-P3 tanks that require no more than 30 milliamps of
current to bring the tank to protected levels.
This RP contains information regarding the num-
ber, size, and type of anodes that may be used to sup-
plement the cathodic protection of an sti-P3 tank, the
installation of the anodes, the installation of test sta-
tions, and methods for verifying the proper operation
of the anodes after installation. Procedures for
cathodic protection testing, verification of electrical
isolation, and measurement of supplemental protec-
tive current required are also included in this RP.
F021-02 Specification for the AquaSweep™ Gravity Oil
Water Separator. This specification covers the
AquaSweep Gravity Oil Water Separators for either
underground or aboveground applications. Aqua-
Sweep is offered in several models, all of which have
been tested and are listed to UL Subject 2215, Outline
of Investigation for Oil/Water Separators. The user may
select the model best suited for his particular applica-
tion. The AquaSweep gravity oil water separator tech-
nology may be used with any STI underground
technology (sti-P3, ACT-100®, ACT-100-U®, or Per-
matank®), aboveground technology (Fireguard®,
F921®, Flameshield®), or other UST/AST tank tech-
nology.
U.S. EPA set forth regulations in the Clean Water
Act and the Storm Water Pollution Act that require the
discharge of a storm water drainage system to meet
certain effluent cleanliness limits. The AquaSweep
gravity separator is designed to comply with certain
requirements of these Acts.
This specification incorporates all the designs
offered and shows how to construct a properly
designed and tested gravity oil water separator. The
primary purpose of this specification is to establish
proper production procedures that are fully sup-
ported by quality assurance measures and proper
installation, start-up, maintenance, troubleshooting,
and repair requirements.
For more information about these and other STI
standards and recommended practices, or to order a
copy of the complete document, visit the STI Web site
at www.steeltank.com, or contact the Steel Tank
Institute at 570 Oakwood Road, Lake Zurich, Illinois,
60047. Phone: (847)438-8265; fax: (847)438-8766;
e-mail: infonnation@steeltank.com.
16
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
Do Monitoring Wells Monitor Well? Part II
The Regulatory Basis for Monitoring Well Design, Siting, and Monitoring
In Part I of this article (LUSTLine #40) I discussed the function of monitoring wells and presented several of their many short-
comings. To recap from the last article, the primary function of a groundwater monitoring well is to provide subsurface access for (a)
the measurement of liquid levels and. (b) the collection of liquid samples for analysis. Monitoring wells may also be used to collect
gas/vapor samples and measure vertical transport properties, and they are convenient (although rarely optimally located) places to
install various components of a remediation system. I also asked the questions, "Why is it that so little consideration is actually given
to the question of whether the data we derive from them is of adequate quality? Are we somehow bound by inflexible rules that defy
common sense?"
In Part II of this series, I'll take you through an in-depth look at the federal regulations (and preamble) to identify potential con-
straints and then develop a defensible strategy to overcome whatever obstacles we may encounter. Beware! The sections titled "Regu-
latory Language" and "Preamble—Clarification and Guidance" contain material that may induce narcolepsy in all but the most
detail- and academically oriented readers. To prevent serious bodily injury in the event of loss of consciousness, skip these two sections
and dive right into "A Probing Analysis." You can always refer back to these sections in case of insomnia.
Regulatory Language
By now LUSTLine readers should be
intimately familiar with 40 CFR 280,
the federal regulations for the techni-
cal requirements for underground
storage tank systems. Considering
the extremely broad scope of these
regulations, and the amount of detail
in some of the sections (e.g., release
detection), it is somewhat remarkable
that the regulations are only 13 pages
in length—a mere footnote by normal
regulatory standards! It is somewhat
disconcerting, however, that in the
corrective action portion of the regu-
lations (Subparts E and F) the word
"well(s)" is only mentioned three
times (and then only once within the
context of a "monitoring well"),
whereas in the prevention section
(actually only in Subpart D) "moni-
toring well(s)" is used 10 times.
Granted, this frequency or infre-
quency of occurrence isn't the issue,
if s what's actually said that's impor-
tant. And it's important to note that
the corrective action sections of the
regulations provide no guidance
with respect to monitoring well
design, siting, and sampling. None.
The free-product-removal regula-
tions merely spell out the informa-
tion requirements for the free-
product-removal report that must be
submitted to the implementing
agency within 45 days after confirm-
ing a release.
The sections on release detection
provide substantially more detail,
though these sections don't apply to
wells used for environmental moni-
toring. Because vapor monitoring
and groundwater monitoring are
allowable release-detection methods,
it isn't at all surprising that Subpart D
makes frequent mention of "monitor-
ing well(s)." Monitoring wells are
also mentioned in the requirements
for the interstitial monitoring release-
detection method. Let's look at what
these release detection regulations
say about monitoring wells.
• Vapor Monitoring Regulatory
language for vapor monitoring in the
first five subsections of §280.43(e)
describes requirements for "monitor-
ing device(s)" and only in the final
two sections does it refer to "moni-
toring wells" per se. • Section
§280.43(e)(6) requires that the UST
excavation zone be assessed to
"...establish the number and position-
ing of monitoring wells that will
detect releases within the excavation
zone..." Note that this clause refers
exclusively to releases within the
excavation zone and not those (if
any) in the soil surrounding the exca-
vation (e.g., from piping or vent
lines). The final section (§280.43(e)(7))
merely requires that vapor-monitor-
ing wells be clearly marked and
secured.
• Groundwater Monitoring Sec-
tion §280.43(f) mentions a few limited
design specifications regarding
• continued on page 18
17
-------
LUSTLinc Bulletin 41 • June 2002
m WanderLUST from page 17
groundwater-monitoring wells. Sec-
tion §280.43(f)(3) stipulates that
"[t]he slotted portion of the monitor-
ing-well casing must be designed to
prevent migration of natural soils or
filter pack into the well and to allow
entry of regulated substance on the
water table into the well under both
high- and low-groundwater condi-
tions." Section §280.43(f)(l) defines a
"regulated substance" as being both
immiscible in water and having a
specific gravity of less than one.
The intent of these two passages
is quite clear: groundwater-monitor-
ing wells installed for the purposes of
release detection must allow entry of
regulated substances that float (hav-
ing a density less than one) on the
water table (i.e., a light nonaqueous-
phase liquid [LNAPL]) and that they
do so when the water table is at both
its highest and lowest elevations
(presumably on an annual cycle). If
this weren't sufficiently clear, Section
§280.43(f)(6) settles the issue as fol-
lows: "Tlte continuous monitoring
devices or manual methods used can
detect the presence of at least one-
eighth of an inch of free product on
top of the groundwater in the moni-
toring wells."
Section §280.43(f)(4) requires that
the annular space be sealed from the
top of the filter pack to ground sur-
face. This is a standard design feature
of any well to eliminate a pathway
for contaminants on the ground sur-
face to reach groundwater. Section
§280.43(f)(6) stipulates that these
"monitoring wells or devices inter-
cept the excavation zone or are as
close to it as is technically feasible."
As with the vapor monitoring
section, there is a requirement
(§280.43(f)(7)) for the UST excavation
zone to be assessed to "...establish the
number and positioning of monitor-
ing wells or devices that will detect
releases..." However, here they are
not restricted to being within the
excavation zone. Finally, there is a
requirement that the monitoring
wells be dearly marked and secured
(§280.43(f)(8)).
• Interstitial Monitoring The final
occurrence of "monitoring well" in
the UST regulations occurs in
§280.43(g)(2)(vi) and merely requires
that the monitoring wells be clearly
18
marked and secured. These wells will
not be considered further in this
article.
Now that we've scoured the reg-
ulations for language relating to
monitoring well(s), what have we
learned? Not much. The next avenue
is for us to look at language in the
preamble and conduct a similar
examination.
, ,
;;;;;' It is somewhat disconcerting,
'• ""'S.fp11' *™""!'-' r ^"TiT'pry^Tpm—rryr^r™^ ,^_ -
>s '»»»,-:.ii*, .*«gti*a4^W(iia(ii.|^**,|feFij
I;:i: however, that in the corrective
*i'h "" « "I !!'" " •|B^--£jjjs.^:r-^a»---jF-.-^--^-.4~"-.-z-~~~~'--!^:5~a3=^T~vv-~" =-:
Hlon portion of the regulations
9St!!uma^^^^^^^
the word
Ts
'f'well(sl "is only mentioned! three
limes (and then only once within the
"'"*: ..'-^".'rif in i,iK^i!™'/'a&i«i*ii5*>jj1jf!.l,*i[!,'i'"j"--i^'«4B»T.^n..™jKliajM!r"j'.^.-«J--' w»arti»
]> M& \r. ; ,J n .^nAi.y.^i^gg.^^^lm TSVJ^J-^ M-JU-JK- ?!yg^|fe2;=T^;>-J 1tti'^fi'tj|
i'ji '-'] 'i.i.n H'u i kV^iir liHiinir Mirin..jrBiiriS^ lilr-rliiif& riiifiu iaiinivh iH'ffiSSSs^M^!
"[context of a "monitoring well"),
riii:i'"l"f'J?£SSS^^S^S^Sim,"m^S£il^iiLii
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:"^jfhereas:i mjne prevention section
Preamble—Clarification and
Guidance
In contrast to the rule itself, the pre-
amble is over 100 pages in length.
The words "monitoring well(s)"
occur with much greater frequency
and, not unexpectedly, most of these
occurrences relate to the same sec-
tions we've already examined in the
regulation. For convenience I'll orga-
nize the discussion in the same man-
ner as above, but I'll focus the
discussion on what's different and
(hopefully) more explanatory than
the regulations.
• Vapor Monitoring Vapor-moni-
toring wells serve functions that are
very different than groundwater-
monitoring wells. In the discussion of
the effectiveness of vapor-monitoring
wells, the preamble recognizes this
by stating: "...a vapor-monitoring
well does not necessarily mean a typ-
ical groundwater well. Instead, a
vapor-monitoring well means any
sampling point from which vapors
are collected and brought to the mon-
itor by any means." No additional
clarification or description is pro-
vided for either the vapor-monitor-
ing wells or "sampling points." These
wells will not be considered further
in this article.
• Groundwater Monitoring The
preamble acknowledges that "[t]he
final rule still allows monitoring on
top of the water table for free product
but with several changes: well place-
ment is no longer limited to the exca-
vation zone; the well screen must be
designed to prevent clogging and
intercept the water table at both high-
and low-groundwater conditions;
and the well must be sealed from the
ground to the top of the filter pack."
This allows monitoring wells for
release detection to be located even
farther from the potential source of a
release.
In the discussion of "Limita-
tions" of this method, the preamble
restates that groundwater monitor-
ing is "limited to use with products
that are immiscible in water and
lighter than water so the product can
be detected by the monitors." Further
discussion of this issue reveals that
U.S. EPA recognizes that this release-
detection method is "...intended for,
use with gasoline and other sub-
stances that are, in fact, slightly solu-
ble in water. Thus, the immiscibility
requirement does not exclude sub-
stances that are, in fact, slightly solu-
ble. The slight solubility will not
interfere with rapid detection
because most of the product is still
floating on top of the water table
where the monitor can sense it."
The final section on groundwater
monitoring discusses the sensitivity
of the monitoring device. For this the
agency adopted a performance stan-
dard "requiring that the monitoring
equipment be capable of detecting
the presence of at least one-eighth of
an inch of free product on top of the
groundwater."
According to the preamble, "This
value was selected because it is the
maximum performance that manu-
facturers continue to claim can be
achieved by existing automated mon-
itoring equipment," although it is
"intended to apply both to auto-
mated and manual monitoring tech-
niques."
A bit later, the preamble recog-
nizes that "manual methods of col-
lecting and analyzing groundwater
samples...may be more sensitive than
automated monitors..." but dismisses
this argument supporting the use of
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
manual methods because they are
"...very subjective and can only be
conducted intermittently, whereas
automated methods can be continu-
ous and are less subjective."
Debating the "subjectiveness" of
methods for measuring free product
on the water table as release detec-
tion completely misses the more
important point of whether or not a
particular method is at all effective in
detecting a leak before it causes a seri-
ous environmental problem. This is
akin to rearranging the deck chairs
on the Titanic.
A Probing Analysis
Now that we've completed a thor-
ough examination of both the regula-
tions and the preamble, what do we
know about monitoring well design,
siting, and monitoring? With respect
to design, monitoring wells are only
really discussed in the context of
groundwater monitoring for release
detection, and specifically for mea-
surement of free product. Although
language in the preamble does recog-
nize that gasoline (and its compo-
nents) aren't totally immiscible,
applicability is explicitly restricted to
substances that are immiscible or
only "slightly soluble" in water.
At first blush this restriction may
seem to be a material weakness (and
it is) because the regulations only
superficially address monitoring
requirements for dissolved contami-
nants. But there is an unintended
positive consequence. This conse-
quence is that groundwater monitor-
ing as release detection is implicitly
disallowed for use with substances
that are more than "slightly soluble"
(e.g., MTBE, other ethers, alcohols).
It's bad enough that the measure-
ment criteria is explicitly set at one-
eighth of an inch even for slightly
soluble substances. So what are the
monitoring requirements for dis-
solved substances?
The only explicit mention of "dis-
solved" substances appears in section
§280.65(a): "In order to determine the
full extent and location of soils conta-
minated by the release and the pres-
ence and concentrations of dissolved
product contamination in the
groundwater, owners and operators
must conduct investigations of the
release, the release site, and the sur-
rounding area possibly affected by
the release..." This section also lists
several criteria, of which at least one
must apply before §280.65(a) applies,
and it is likely that at least one would
apply at most release sites if an ade-
quate investigation were conducted.
Alas, no substantive guidance is
provided on how one would go
about determining "the presence and
concentrations of dissolved product
contamination in the groundwater."
Fortunately, however, other sections
of the regulations that do not deal
with release detection provide some
insight into "measuring for contami-
nation," although this too is rather
vague.
Section §280.52(b) ("Site Check")
requires that owners and operators
"...measure for the presence of a
release where contamination is most
likely to be present at the UST site. In
selecting sample types, sample loca-
tions, and measurement methods,
owners and operators must consider
the nature of the stored substance,
...the depth of groundwater, and
other factors appropriate for identify-
ing the presence and source of the
release."
Similar language appears in sec-
tions §280.62 ("Release Response")
and §280.72 ("Out-of-Service UST
Systems and Closure"). Language in
the preamble explains that the
agency intentionally did not pre-
scribe a given sampling method or
measurement technique because it
"may not provide representative
results for all types of regulated sub-
stances and site conditions."
With respect to the siting of mon-
itoring wells for release detection
purposes, section §280.43(f)(5) directs
that such wells are required to be
sited as close to the tank excavation
as is technically feasible so that a
release may be detected as quickly as
possible. Section §280.65(a) makes it
clear that the area of investigation
includes not only the release site but
the surrounding area that might be
affected by the release, so presum-
ably environmental monitoring wells
may be sited virtually anywhere.
Piecing Together a Strategy
From the above dissection of the reg-
ulations (and preamble) we see that
40 CFR 280 presents a rather dis-
jointed collection of guidance and
requirements for monitoring wells
that, although good-intentioned, is
incomplete and sometimes incongru-
ous. Bear in mind that the regulations
were written in the mid-to-late 1980s,
and a lot of what we now know
about how fuel releases behave in the
subsurface has been learned in the
years since promulgation of the regu-
lations. For instance, the writers were
blissfully ignorant of the characteris-
tics of MTBE and the other oxy-
genates. They hadn't had the benefit
of having spent several years dealing
with the MTBE issue on a day-to-day
basis. Even the transport and fate
characteristics of free product, in gen-
eral, and its more soluble compo-
nents (i.e., BTEX), were at best
incompletely understood.
Today we cannot credibly hide
behind those same excuses. Although
there's still a lot that is unknown, we
can't afford the luxury of ignoring
some of the most basic principles
governing the transport of dissolved
contaminants in groundwater. And
although the regulations are far from
perfect, we can piece together an
improved strategy for dealing with
fuel releases that is defensible from a
regulatory perspective.
The starting point is language
directing responsible parties to "mea-
sure for the presence of a release
where contamination is most likely to
be present at the UST site" consider-
ing "the nature of the stored sub-
stance,...the depth of groundwater,
and other factors appropriate for
identifying the presence and source
of the release." So, let's see what
we've got:
• We all need to recognize that
conventional monitoring wells
that are screened over long verti-
cal distances are inadequate
and unsatisfactory. Such wells
absolutely cannot provide the three-
dimensional data that is essential for
delineating the extent of dissolved
contamination. All monitoring wells
should have relatively short screens
(no more than two to five feet), and a
sufficient number of wells should be
installed in close proximity (as in a
"nest") such that there is continuous
coverage from the seasonal high
water elevation down to a depth
below the water table, beneath which
it is unlikely that a dissolved plume
will dive. This generally will be an
increasing depth with distance from
the source.
• continued on page 20
19
-------
LUSTLittc Bulletin 41 • June 2002
m WanderLUST from page 19
• New monitoring wells should
be installed in transects spaced at
appropriate intervals along the
length of the plume. The network
of wells should be dense enough to
provide a high degree of confidence
that the plume is not migrating unde-
tected, either between wells or
beneath them. The plume should be
surrounded by wells that lie outside
the plume (i.e., samples collected
from these wells should contain no
trace of contamination at any depth).
• Discrete samples collected from
each of these new monitoring
wells should be analyzed for the
major fuel components (i.e.,
BTEX) plus all potential oxy-
genate additives (e.g., MTBE,
ETBE, TAME, TAEE, DIPE, TEA,
TAA, ethanol, and methanol)
each and every time a sample is
collected. EPA has recently com-
pleted a study that demonstrates that
Methods 8015 and 8260 are appropri-
ate for determination of MTBE and
the other fuel oxygenates using
appropriate sample preparative
methods (e.g., Methods 5021,5030 [at
elevated temperature] or 5032). The
protocol for using these methods is
only slightly different than current
practice, so any cost increase should
be insignificant in relation to the
improvement of the quality of the
data thus produced. Whatever the
incremental increase may be, it is cer-
tainly worth paying a little more to
obtain data that are accurate, com-
prehensive, and credible. Informa-
tion on these methods will soon be
available from a variety of sources.
An article will be published in LUST-
Line, an EPA fact sheet is in produc-
tion and should be circulated soon,
and SW-846 (EPA's methods com-
pendium) will be updated in the near
future (visit http://www.epa.gov/
epaoswer/hazwaste/test/sw846.htm).
• New monitoring wells should
be "monitored" on a frequent
basis. Quarterly events are not
unreasonably frequent, especially
where oxygenates are concerned.
Water table elevations fluctuate in
response to local influences (e.g.,
thunderstorms, tides) as well as
annual weather patterns. Dissolved
contaminant concentrations in wells
20
may also vary significantly over the
course of a year. Sometimes this is in
conjunction with water level fluctua-
tions; sometimes it isn't.
Without sufficient data to iden-
tify such trends, it is impossible to
make credible predictions about
plume behavior. Further, the increas-
ing reliance on degradation rates cal-
culated • from plume centerline
behavior is predicated upon data
from wells that are in fact located on
the centerline. In many cases the pri-
mary direction of groundwater flow,
and hence migration of contaminants
along the "centerline," may exhibit
seasonal variation by as much as 90
degrees.
1 Although the regulations are far
from perfect, we can piece
together an 'improved strategy for
: dealing wijti fuel releases thatis^
...Jis ^piwfi(ujiii^j^f^ft^iK«j^MifBj^|fajit|
&:^efe"nsKfym"aJeguJaJoiy
»i' il '"p ' "!i !* jri1'»''ill!'!"1! "ill1 rfe W
Such variation is problematic
enough for determining whether
receptors may ultimately be
impacted—data from wells that
aren't actually on the centerline (or
which are sometimes and are not at
other times) can yield an erroneous
and overly optimistic calculated
degradation rate. This in turn leads to
an erroneous calculated time frame
for achieving cleanup objectives and
points out the importance of regular
monitoring to track remedial
progress.
Decisions about site closure
should only be made based on actual
field data. Under no circumstances
should a site ever receive a "no fur-
ther action" determination until it's
been confirmed that remediation
objectives have, in fact, been achieved
and demonstrated to remain at or
below the desired level for a specified
period of time thereafter.
• Groundwater monitoring for
release detection should be aban-
doned. The presumption that free
product floating on the water table
will serve as a timely first indication
of a release is just plain wrong! Espe-
cially with fuel oxygenates present in
just about any UST at any time, a sig-
nificant dissolved plume could have
formed and begun migrating long
before one-eighth of an inch of free
product is noticed in a monitoring
well that might be checked every 30
days.
If groundwater monitoring is
used for release detection, then daily
collection and analysis of groundwa-
ter samples for dissolved contami-
nants should be required. Once every
30 days is insufficient, especially
when another month is allowed to
confirm the first month's results. By
this flawed strategy, a release could
have been ongoing for 60 days before
the "suspected" release was even
reported. Months could pass before
any remedial efforts would occur,
and in that amount of time the plume
would continue to grow.
If dissolved contaminants are
detected in a monitoring well, then
there's no doubt that a release has
occurred; it isn't "suspected," it's a
fact! Only the magnitude and cause
of the release are unknown. (Unfortu-
nately, implementation of this recom-
mendation at the federal level would
require a change in the regulations,
which could take decades. Perhaps
implementation at the state level
could be achieved more quickly?)
The third article in this series will
consider existing "conventional"
monitoring wells. We'll look at exam-
ples both from real sites and from
hypothetical situations to reinforce
the points I've tried to make in the
two preceding articles. Perhaps then
there will no longer be any lingering
doubts about the answer I've pro-
vided to the eternal question, "Do
monitor wells monitor well?" •
Hal White is a hydrogeologist with the
U.S. EPA Office of Underground Stor-
age Tanks. He can be reached at
white.hal@epa.gov.
This article ivas written by the author
in his private capacity, and the conclu-
sions and opinions drawn are solely
those of the author. The article has not
been subjected to U.S. EPA review and
therefore does not necessarily reflect
the views of the agency, and no official
endorsement should be inferred.
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
Remediation
Reevaluating the Upward Vapor Migration
Risk Pathway
by Blayne Hartman
"¥" A "Then we last addressed this topic in November 1997 (LUSTLine #27, "The Upward Migration of Vapors"), the article
I /\ I began with a prologue indicating that the human health risk due to the upward migration of subsurface contaminants in
w V the vapor phase is a growing concern to regulatory agencies. Four years later, it is safe to say that concern among regula-
tory agencies surrounding this risk pathway has grown quite considerably. It now seems that federal, state, and local agencies
across the country know about calculating risk using the Johnson-Ettinger model. In fact, U.S. EPA has a 63-page User's Guide for
the Johnson & Ettinger (J-E) model and another Supplemental Guidance document currently posted on its web site
(www.epa.gov/correctiveaction/eis/vapor.htm). Custom versions of the J-E model are commonplace from state to state and in
some states, from county to county.
But the proper approach for assessing this risk pathway is still under debate. In May 2001, by direct request from the governor,
the Michigan Environmental Science Board evaluated the use of the J-E model and issued a report that concluded that the model was
appropriate, although the committee expressed confusion over the model's failure to adequately predict trichloroethylene (TCE) con-
centrations from a Colorado study. Earlier this year, the Denver Post brought even more attention to the debate over this risk path-
way and the Johnson-Ettinger model in a series of articles calling the model "flawed," attacking U.S. EPA's use of the model, and
even accusing EPA of a cover-up about a "botched toxic-gas probe" (www.denverpost.com/Storiesl).
Confused? You're clearly not alone. So, what better reason to take another look at the upward vapor risk issue and see if we can
clear up some of the confusion that currently exists.
A Review of the Concepts
Simplified, the Johnson-Ettinger
model allows us to compute the
indoor room concentration from the
upward flux of a contaminant in the
vapor phase. The vapor flux into a
building is computed from Pick's first
law, requiring measurements of the
soil vapor concentration at some
depth underlying the structure. Soil
vapor concentrations may be mea-
sured directly. Alternatively, in the
absence of actual soil vapor data, soil
vapor concentrations are commonly
calculated from soil and groundwa-
ter data, assuming equilibrium con-
ditions, using equations based on
Henry's Law constants and soil-to-
water partitioning constants (ASTM,
1995). And here lies the source of most of
the problems that are currently being
experienced with the use of this model.
Remember the Salad
Dressing
Immediately following the deluge of
equations in my 1997 article, I gave a
warning about using these equations
to calculate soil vapor data. Let's
repeat some of the text here to refresh
our memories:
Room Volume
-Slab
Room Floor Area
(A)
Depth (X)
Soil Gas
Concentration
(CSB)
You must recognize that the equa-
tions used to calculate the soil
vapor concentration from soil-
phase data, water-phase data, or
free -product assume equilibrium
partitioning between the phases.
Equilibrium partitioning is
obtained only if a system is well
mixed. This condition is very
rarely accomplished in the subsur-
face, because there are no blenders
or stirrers present to homogenize
the vapor, soil, and groundwater.
A common analogy used to
illustrate this mixing concept is the
preparation of a salad dressing
using oil and vinegar. When the
ingredients are initially added to
the container, they fall into sepa-
rate layers; the container must be
shaken to mix the ingredients. If
the container is not shaken, the oil
and vinegar mix very slowly,
"equilibrium is not reached," and
the resulting salad dressing does
not taste very good.
• continued on page 22
21
-------
LUSTLine Bulletin 41 • June 2002
• Upward Vapor Migration
from page 21
Indeed, the results of published
studies comparing measured soil
vapor concentrations to soil vapor
values calculated from groundwater
using Henry's constants indicate that
calculated values are often overesti-
mated by factors of 10 to 100. Conta-
minant partitioning from soil to soil
vapor is also likely to be far from
equilibrium.
I
I My personal experience, based on
i measurement of contaminated soil
m f '?;
• and soil vapor at the same location,
• fsthatlnthe^caseofj^dncar^ons,
*£• ' "' !" ,'"' !'' ! ,":,
I calculated soil vapor values from
| soil-phase data often overestimate
s
i| actual soil vapor concentrations by
« factors of 10 to 1,000.
I
1
My personal experience, based
on measurement of contaminated soil
and soil vapor at the same location, is
that in the case of hydrocarbons, cal-
culated soil vapor values from soil-
phase data often overestimate actual
soil vapor concentrations by factors
of 10 to 1,000. In the case of chlori-
nated hydrocarbons, calculated soil
vapor values from soil-phase data
often underestimate actual soil vapor
concentrations, perhaps due to the
presence of contaminant vapor
clouds infiltrating into the vadose
zone from the surface and creating
higher soil vapor concentrations. (See
LUSTLine #28, "The Downward
Migration of Vapors.")
The Key Conclusion
If calculated soil vapor values can
differ from actual values by factors of
10 to 1,000, than the calculated vapor
fluxes, and in turn, the calculated
room concentrations using any ver-
sion of the J-E model will be off by a
similar factor. In other words, the
error introduced by the calculated
soil vapor data is likely to be far
greater than errors introduced by any
of the other parameters used in the
model (e.g., porosity, advection,
multi-layers).
22
What Happened in Denver?
The EPA was under fire because
indoor air measurements showed the
presence of a contaminant (1,1 DCE)
in homes at concentrations exceeding
1 in 1 million risk levels, yet indoor
air values calculated from the J-E
model indicated values below this
risk level. The conclusion reached by
the press was that EPA was using a
faulty model.
But upon inspection, one learns
that soil vapor values were not mea-
sured but calculated from groundwa-
ter values. Further adding to the
potential error, the groundwater val-
ues themselves were not measured
under the majority of the homes, but
were estimated from contours of sur-
rounding monitoring well data.
These are two very big potential
errors that, combined, could intro-
duce errors of two to three orders of
magnitude in the soil vapor value
used in the model calculation. While
the situation here is a little more com-
plex, the unfortunate fact is that EPA
is getting torched in the press over
the use of a bad model when, in fact,
the real reason might be the inaccu-
racy of the data input into the model
(i.e., the soil vapor concentration).
The "moral" of this story is that
one must be careful about calculating
soil vapor concentrations from
groundwater- or soil-phase data.
Many people feel that soil vapor val-
ues calculated from groundwater or
soil data are more dependable than
measured values because they show
less variability than measured soil
vapor data. While it is true that actual
sott vapor data will show more vari-
ability than groundwater values, the
gain in precision does not come close
to offsetting the loss in accuracy. If
soil vapor data are collected prop-
erly, the variability in the measure-
ments (i.e., precision) from day to
day is generally
less than a fac-
tor of two.
This is much
smaller than
errors of a
factor of 10
to 1,000.
The Optimum Approach for
Evaluating the Upward Vapor
Migration Risk Pathway
Okay, so what's the optimum tech-
nique for determining the upward
vapor migration risk? In my experi-
ence, the J-E model, limitations aside,
tends to overestimate risk in nearly all
cases if the proper soil vapor values
are used, and hence is a conservative
approach to the problem. However,
the likely fallout of the negative press
on the Denver site is that there will be
a tendency to move away from the
use of the J-E model and toward eval-
uating this risk pathway using sur-
face flux-chamber measurements and
indoor air measurements.
Beware, because these tech-
niques have their limitations also,
principally the following:
• A lack of data points (1 or 2 mea-
surements over limited time inter-
vals)
• Potential for contamination from
sources besides flux from the bot-
tom (with an indoor air measure-
ment, how do you know where
the contaminant came from?)
• No knowledge of what lurks below
• High potential for blanks that are
then misinterpreted as fluxes
• An unsophisticated end-user (i.e.,
consultants who can't interpret
the results)
The point is not that these tech-
niques are not valid to use, but that
they too have limitations that need to
be considered before selecting the
best method to use. You wouldn't
consider proposing or accepting a
site-assessment report with only one
analysis from one or two borings,
would you? So why would you
accept only one or two flux-chamber
or indoor-air measurements to close
this risk pathway?
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
The likely fallout of the negative
press on the Denver site is that there
will be a tendency to move away
j from the use of the J-E model and
jjoward evaluating this risk pathway
using surface flux-chamher
measurements and indoor air
measurements.
I
Until we get a better database
from which to make a reasonable
conclusion as to the optimum
approach, I strongly recommend the
following:
• Use J-E type models with actual
soil gas data. Analyze the soil
vapor at a reasonable number of
points (minimum of four) cover-
ing the footprint of the existing or
future building. Analyze soil
vapor at shallower depths if sam-
ples collected at 5-feet below
ground surface (bgs) indicate a
potential problem. If samples are
to be collected at very shallow
depths (<3 feet bgs), consider
installing vapor implants and
measuring the soil vapor multi-
ple times to evaluate the preci-
sion of the measurements. Refer
to the article in LUSTLine #27 for
a sampling protocol.
• For flux-chamber or indoor-air
programs, take more than one
measurement, collect for at least 8
hours (24 hours preferred), and
collect at least one soil vapor
sample under the footprint to see
if anything lies below, especially
at chlorinated solvent sites. •
Blayne Hartman, PhD., is a principal
of HP Labs and the founder of TEG.
He has lectured on soil vapor methods
and data interpretation to over 20
state agencies and to all of the U.S.
EPA regions. Blayne has contributed
numerous articles to LUSTLine and
authored chapters in three textbooks
on soil vapor methods and analysis.
For more information, either e-mail
Blayne directly at bhartman@hplab-
sonsite.com or check out his Web page
at www.hplabsonsite.com.
Remediation
All Aboard the UST Train
by Debbie Mann
Do you remember the "Little
Engine that Could"? With
encouragement and will-
power, he did what he set out to
accomplish. Region 4 states have the
same resolve when it comes to train-
ing and are headed down the track
with a project we call the "UST
Train," a vision for training LUST
program personnel.
In an ideal world, states looking
for employees to perform environ-
mental technical duties would hire
personnel experienced in environ-
mental engineering, geology, and so
on. Unfortunately, states are not
always able to hire those experienced
people. Instead, they often hire indi-
viduals who they believe have poten-
tial to learn but who may or may not
have the necessary experience. The
new hire is then thrust into our pro-
grams with little or no knowledge
and asked to perform as well as an
experienced veteran. Likewise, the
veteran also needs continuing educa-
tion and resources in this ever-chang-
ing field.
One of the greatest challenges of
any LUST program is getting new
hires trained as quickly as possible
and training not-so-new hires in
advanced topics at a reasonable price
so they can effectively contribute to
the assessment and corrective action
of LUST sites. This becomes a chal-
lenge not only for the LUST program
but also for the environmental and
business communities, who find
themselves patiently—or not so
patiently—waiting for responses to
their proposals. Better-trained regu-
lators should lead to more effective
cleanups, including a shortened time
to closure and a reduced financial
investment.
Recognizing this common chal-
lenge, U.S. EPA Region 4 states part-
nered with British Petroleum (BP)
and Smoothstone Systems to create
interactive, Internet-based training
on basic hydrogeology and to explore
the possibilities for developing a
future on-line training program and
on-line tools for LUST professionals.
In less than a year, through our part-
nering efforts, we developed an on-
line training pilot using material
directed at new hires to serve as a
beginning point for concept develop-
ment.
At the 2002 UST/LUST National
Conference, the pilot project was
voted first place at the State Fair.
During the fair, EPA and state LUST
personnel from across the country
expressed to us the same training
frustrations. They also expressed the
desire for this concept to move from
prototype to production. If you visit
www.ust.smoothstone.com, you will
see why they were interested in see-
ing the project moving forward.
Wouldn't it be great if a training
protocol and material were devel-
oped to help train your LUST and
UST employees at all levels? Region 4
states are working with ASTSWMO
and OUST to make this a reality. We
welcome your input and ideas and
would like for you to voice your
thoughts for a cost-effective training
solution to ASTSWMO and OUST.
It's time for us all to get aboard the
UST Train. •
Comments and ideas can be sent to the
Region 4 states by contacting Debbie
Mann at Debbie.Mann@state.tn.us
or Walter Huff at
Walter_Huff@deq.state.ms.us.
23
-------
LUSTLine Bulletin 41 • June 2002
Lose Some MTBE Lately?
Unsettling Poundage in EPA's
Toxic Release Inventory
by Patricia Ellis
In 1986, Congress passed the
Emergency Planning and Com-
munity Right-to-Know Act. The
law, prompted in part by Union Car-
bide's Bhopal chemical disaster,
required companies to make public
the amounts of chemicals they
release into the air, land, and water.
Every year since then, EPA has pub-
lished the Toxics Release Inventory
(TRI) to disclose chemical release
information to the public.
EPA released the annual report
in May 2002 for data collected during
the year 2000. The report documents
the amounts of about 670 chemicals
released into the environment by
large manufacturing facilities and
industries. Nationally, some 23,000
facilities released about 7.1 billion
pounds of toxic substances in 2000.
Mining, coal-burning power plants,
and chemical and petrochemical
plants produce much of the pollu-
tion.
Based on trends since the incep-
tion of the TRI in 1988, chemical
releases have decreased about 48 per-
cent. The TRI is a tool to help citizens
assess local environmental conditions
and to help them make decisions
about protecting their environment.
The data can be used in conjunction
with environmental information to
analyze trends in environmental
indicators at both the national and
local levels. The data often spur com-
panies to focus on their chemical
management practices.
Metal and coal-mining compa-
nies, coal-fired and oil-burning utili-
ties, chemical wholesale distributors,
petroleum distributors and storage
facilities, and hazardous waste treat-
ment and disposal facilities with
more than 10 employees that manu-
facture or process in excess of 25,000
pounds or use more than 10,000
pounds of toxic chemicals a year are
24
required to report their emissions to
state governments and EPA. Persis-
tent, bioaccumulative toxic (PBT)
chemicals, newly added to the list,
have lower reporting limits.
Looking at all chemical releases,
approximately 27 percent of chemi-
cals were released to air, 4 percent to
water, and 69 percent to land, on-site
and off-site. Releases from the min-
ing industry made up 47 percent, or
approximately 3.4 billion pounds.
Releases from manufacturing indus-
tries accounted for 32 percent of all
releases, or 2.3 billion pounds. About
1.5 billion pounds, or 16 percent of
the releases, were from electric utili-
ties. The TRI is available to the public
at http://www.epa.gov/tri.
MTBE Lost to the
Environment
You may wonder why I am writing
an article about the TRI. As I read my
morning newspaper on May 24,2002,
I noticed that in little Delaware, 76
facilities reported releases of 108 dif-
ferent TRI chemicals. Reported on-
site releases totaled 9.8 million
pounds. (Of this amount, approxi-
mately 7.8 million pounds were
reported as released to the air, while
866,312 pounds were released to
water and approximately 1.1 million
pounds were released to land.) The
total reported waste amount for
Delaware, including on-site releases,
off-site transfers, and waste managed
on-site, totaled approximately 154.6
million pounds.
Then I got to my favorite bit of
news. At the Motiva Enterprises
Delaware City Refinery, emissions of
MTBE increased dramatically from
47,500 pounds in 1999 to 272,000
pounds in 2000, the highest release of
MTBE at any industrial site in the
nation. (See Figure 1 — The Dirtiest
Dozen on page 25.)
The TRI, in a sum-
mary report by
industry, lists a total
of 3,651,837 pounds
of MTBE releases
nationwide, primar-
ily to the air. Figure 2
(see page 26) summa-
rizes the 2000 MTBE releases on a
state-by-state basis. Only California,
Texas, and New Jersey had higher
MTBE releases than Delaware, and
Delaware only has one refinery!
The total TRI MTBE inventory
for the entire country represents a
mere 6 or 7 million gallons of MTBE
lost to the environment. Is it any
wonder that MTBE is showing up at
low levels in air and groundwater in
areas that are nowhere near docu-
mented UST releases?
In recent testimony before the
U.S. House of Representatives Sub-
committee on Environment and
Hazardous Materials, Benjamin
Grumbles, EPA Deputy Assistant
Administrator for Water, stated that
data from the USGS National Ambi-
ent Water Quality Assessment
showed that MTBE frequently occurs
in water supplies in regions with
high MTBE use but that the vast
majority of detections are at very low
levels, with a median concentration
of 0.5 ppb.
In a recent study by the Ameri-
can Water Works Association
Research Foundation (AWWARF),
completed in conjunction with the
Metropolitan Water District of South-
ern California, the Oregon Graduate
Institute, and the USGS, which
involved testing of 954 randomly
selected Community Water Systems
(including 579 wells, 171 rivers, and
204 reservoirs), MTBE was detected
in about 9 percent of all sources sam-
pled and was the second most com-
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
^gBBii|ppii»ip|i)iiilpi«i»iii«i»ipi'-""''''"™»¥'i"p
Motiva Enterprises LLC,
Delaware City, DE
ExxonMobil Refining and Supply,
Baytown, TX
Bayway Refining Co.,
Linden, NJ
BP Amoco Texas City Business Unit,
Texas City, TX
ExxonMobil Refining and Supply,
Baton Rouge, LA
Valero Refining Co, Texas,
Corpus Christi, TX
Chevron Products Co.,
Richmond, CA
McLaren Engines, Inc.,
Livonia, Ml
Motiva Sewaren Terminal,
Sewaren, NJ
Chevron USA Products Co.,
El Segundo, CA
Equilon Martinez Refining Co.,
Martinez, CA
Deer Park Refining LP.,
Deer Park, TX
Total Air
Emissions
272,000
140,671
117,000
61,000
98,242
95,098
76,000
89,715
64,046
28,699
55,000
51,000
Surface Water
Discharges
840
210
38,000
48
11
15,000
18
28,981
1,100
1,900
Underground
Injection
Releases
to Land
0
25
Total On-site
Releases
272,840
140,671
117,210
99,000
98,290
95,109
91,000
89,715
64,064
57,705
56,100
52,900
Total Off-sites
Release
9
0
— 1
Total On-site and
Off-site Releases
272,840
• 140,671
117,210
99,000 '
98,290
95,109
91,009
89,715 !
64,064
57,705
i
56,100
52,900
monly detected VOC (at a reporting
level of 0.2 micrograms per liter).
Findings in Delaware
As part of the National Air and
Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA)
Program, the USGS collected sam-
ples in Delaware from 30 randomly
selected drinking water supply wells
screened in the unconfined aquifer to
access the occurrence and distribu-
tion of selected pesticides, volatile
organic compounds, major inorganic
ions, and nutrients. The samples
were collected between August and
November 2000.
Volatile organic compounds were
present in all 30 wells, generally at less
than 1 microgram/liter. Chloroform,
tetrachloroethene, and MTBE were the
most frequently detected VOCs, and
were found in at least half of the sam-
ples. Seventeen of 30 samples had
MTBE detected. Six of the samples
were between 1 and 10 ppb, and one
sample was above Delaware's 10 ppb
drinking water standard.
In another study, last summer
and fall, the Delaware Department of
Natural Resources and Environmen-
tal Control and Delaware Division of
Public Health sampled public wells
in unconfined aquifers and surface
water intakes that were within a one-
mile radius of known hazardous
waste sites. Thirty-nine wells and
four surface-water intakes were sam-
pled, both raw and treated water, for
a total of 58 samples.
The samples were analyzed for
69 regulated chemicals, 10 chemicals
with secondary standards, and 108
other chemicals. Of the 58 samples,
MTBE and chloroform were detected
in 21 samples. MTBE was the only
chemical that exceeded a Delaware or
U.S. EPA MCL. These included two
wells with MTBE at 12 and 16 ppb,
and the MTBE in one of those wells
has more recently increased to 30
ppb.
Neither of these studies targeted
wells near gasoline stations. Del-
aware has over 400 public drinking
water supply wells that are screened
in unconfined parts of the shallow
aquifer alone and thousands of shal-
low domestic wells. When the
Delaware Division of Public Health
initially began routine sampling for
MTBE in public wells in June 2000, of
the first 210 samples collected, MTBE
was detected in 38 samples, or 18 per-
cent detects. This set of data was not
limited to wells in the unconfined
aquifer.
Is Something Wrong with
This Picture?
Should we be concerned that such a
high percentage of wells had MTBE
• continued on page 27
25
-------
LUSTLine Bulletin 41 • June 2002
|«?3 |S
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
. Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
DC
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
: Missouri
Montana
-------
• l_ose Some W1TBE Lately?
from page 25
detected (17/30 and 21/58), even if
the detects were at low levels, or
should we be pleased that the recent
NAWQA and DNREC/ Public Health
studies identified only three wells
that are above the new Delaware
MTBE MCL of 10 ppb?
Besides the releases that are
tracked by the TRI, some of the other
sources that contribute to MTBE
detections in groundwater include
leaking underground storage tanks
(the usual scapegoat), other gasoline
storage and distribution facilities
such as bulk storage terminals, small
household/farm gasoline tanks,
aboveground storage tanks, petro-
leum pipelines, small releases (e.g.,
gasoline tank ruptures during car
accidents, or consumer disposal of
gasoline in backyards), engine
exhaust and related releases into
lakes and reservoirs from two-stroke
watercraft and older four-stroke
watercraft, and stormwater runoff.
Squillace et al. (1996) suggest that
when small concentrations (0.2 to 3
/ig/L) are detected in groundwater,
the source of contamination may be a
point source but is more likely is a
nonpoint source, such as atmospheric
washout. With the huge volumes of
MTBE that have been released to the
environment in some manner, it
doesn't seem surprising that MTBE
detects are so common.
In 1970, MTBE was the 39th-high-
est produced organic chemical in the
United States. By 1998, it had become
the fourth-highest, with an aggregate
production of about 60 million metric
tons over\that period (Johnson et al.,
2000). Is there anyone else out there
who, like me, is uncomfortable with
the sheer extent of contamination,
rather than relieved that the impacts
have not been more common? Maybe
my generally optimistic nature will
return when or if we see a national
phase-out of the use of MTBE and
similar gasoline additives. •
Pat Ellis is a hydrologist with the
Delaware DNREC UST Branch and
served as member ofEPA's Blue Rib-
bon Panel on MTBE. She is a technical
advisor and regular contributor to
LUSTLine and can be reached at
pellis@dnrec.state.de.us.
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
MTBE Hot Spot at an
Indiana Elementary
School Leads to Concerns
and Questions
by Ellen Frye
On February 14,2002, the strong smell of fuel at the Boezeman Marathon gas
station in Roselawn, Indiana, led the Newton County Health Department to
file a complaint with the Indiana Department of Environmental Manage-
ment (IDEM) regarding possible groundwater contamination. Upon investigation, the
Marathon drinking water well was found to have 2,300-ppb benzene, 1,400-ppb
toluene, and 15-ppb MTBE. It was soon discovered that the well for the nearby
Roselawn Elementary School had had MTBE levels of 32 ppb to 350 ppb—but no ben-
zene or toluene—for a period of at least two years. Of the 41 nearby private residential
wells tested, only two had MTBE—one located east of the school (2.5 ppb) and the other
located north of Marathon (9.2 ppb). As it turns out, there had been some failures to
communicate. As Craig Schroer, LUST Section Chief at IDEM, acknowledges, "Some
hard lessons have been learned."
Discovery
"The most difficult piece of all of this
for us is our concern for the health of
the children and the staff at the
school," says Schroer. That the
MTBE-contaminated water had been
used at the school for at least two
years before it was acknowledged is
partly a result of the fact that MTBE is
not regulated by the federal Safe
Drinking Water Act. In 2000, U.S.
EPA asked public water suppliers to
begin to report for MTBE on a volun-
tary basis. That year, the school sent
IDEM's Drinking Water Branch a
report showing 32 ppb MTBE in its
water supply. IDEM put this infor-
mation into its drinking water quality
database and sent the report on to
U.S. EPA. Inasmuch as there is no
standard for MTBE, IDEM's drinking
water program did not respond in
any manner regarding the detection
of MTBE in the school's water.
In 2001, the school had its water
tested again and submitted to IDEM
a fax of the test results. The MTBE
level at this time had risen to 150 ppb.
In response, IDEM's Drinking Water
Branch faxed a copy of the U.S. EPA
Drinking Water Advisory, recom-
mending that the school system
notify the affected parties. Appar-
ently, nothing was done in response
by the school. In addition, the MTBE
level was at the end of the faxed page
and difficult to read. The number
was entered into the database incor-
rectly. This data entry error resulted
in a lack of notification of IDEM's
Remediation SeOrvices Branch.
In March, 2002, IDEM UST and
LUST staff and U.S. EPA staff visited
Boezeman Marathon for the first time
to conduct a facility inspection and
scope out the area. The facility, which
serves both a retail and distribution
function (for two other Boezeman
stations), contains about 64,000 gal-
lons of fuel within its tank system.
The facility inspection failed to indi-
cate a suspected release. The storage
system subsequently passed two sets
of tank and line pressure tests.
During the initial investigation, a
few private residences as well as the
school were visited to assess whether
petroleum odors had been detected.
No complaints were noted. Since
then, however, water at the school
well has tested as high as 350 parts
per billion (ppb) of MTBE—10 times
U.S. EPA's Drinking Water Advisory
levels of 20-40 ppb for MTBE. IDEM's
LUST site Risk Integrated System of
Closure residential default closure
level is 45 ppb.
In late March, school officials vol-
untarily discontinued use of school
water for drinking, food preparation,
and hand washing. The school is pro-
viding bottled water for drinking and
hand washing. Food is prepared at
an off-site location and brought to the
school. And if MTBE contamination
• continued on page 28
—
-------
LUSTLine Bulletin 41 • June 2002
m MTBE at School from page 27
weren't enough, school officials have
already incurred the wrath of parents
because of an alleged black mold
problem in the school building.
While this problem has, hopefully,
been mitigated, parents' questions
and concerns surrounding both
issues have not.
Subsurface Investigation
The Marathon gas station station sits
directly upgradient from the school
well. "Due to site lithology, hydrol-
ogy, and pumping effects, it looks
like we have a very narrow plume
that dives very quickly toward the
school's well," says Craig Schroer.
"Fortunately, the plume does miss
the hundreds of private wells located
directly across the street from the
school. We could have seen a lot
more wells affected."
As of mid June 2002, Boezeman's
consultants had conducted five sub-
surface investigations both on the gas
station property and off-site—a total
of 41 soil borings and 8 monitoring
wells. Very little soil contamination
has been found, which is not surpris-
ing, as the area is mainly fine sands to
a depth of 50 feet or more.
Initial groundwater samples
showed no contamination when col-
lected at the surface of the ground-
water at 15 feet at the property
boundary. However, a subsequent
round of borings and monitoring
wells that were installed at varied
depths revealed BTEX and MTBE at
25 feet and greater. Benzene levels
were as high as 24,700 ppb. MTBE
levels were as high as 1,190 ppb.
had been used at fhe school for at
least two Years before it was
I
acknowledged is partly a result oj[_
Mil'.it |< • tyUri^^
the fact that MTBE is not regulated
I ft:-- ^'TiWjSjWrtSfraElRtStSfKWfcpHffiiifflSr
f h! ' ""» " Hlii™»ll*Hl!"*pl WNp^Hfitn^fl^'Wi^rtlJlflfMWswfJWWSflwpf'W
Si :,*y the federal Safe prinkin
"
The fourth subsurface investiga-
tion, conducted in May, took place
off-site to the north in the direction of
the school's well and groundwater
flow and focused on collecting grab
samples at 10- to 25-foot intervals
and revealed more BTEX and MTBE
at 25 feet and below. BTEX, however,
was much less prevalent than on site,
reaching 464 ppb. MTBE was higher
than on site, reaching 2,190 ppb.
The fifth subsurface investigation
was conducted in June, this time
around the school's well to determine
how the MTBE plume is tracking and
to assess whether there is another
source. This investigation identified
MTBE near the well as high as 1,070
ppb.
Craig Schroer notes that current
data indicate that the BTEX and
MTBE plumes seem to be behaving
differently in that one seems to be
going north and the other northwest.
"I was kind of surprised by that,"
says Schroer, " but we'll be doing fur-
ther investigating."
Boezeman Marathon, which
responded quickly in terms of taking
appropriate investigative and mitiga-
tive actions, has taken the position
Mystery MTBE Hot Spot in West Virginia
The Berkeley County Health Department referred a complaint
odor in well water to the West Virginia Department of Environ
tion (WVDEP). The well is in a town in the Eastern Panhandle
area that's primarily a karst geology. The town is predominateliTeiid
surrounded by agricultural areas. The nearest known USTs are
the town—there are a few closer farm tanks and ASTs.
The area is supplied by public water. The affected well is use'
garden and washing the car. The WVDEP inspector described
water as smelling like paint thinner. The well owner stated that he had
odor approximately one month earlier and had flushed out his hoWmgSan
the odor returned. Other wells in the immediate vicinity were inaccessible?--}
Lab analyses confirmed a benzene level of 1,890 ppb, GRO of 128 ppm£ai
MTBE level of 231,000 ppb. DRO, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene were non
tect. An investigation of possible sources is underway. Stay tuned.
'ateringjthe
dor ojpthe
etejjtea the
ut
that their station may not be responsi-
ble for the MTBE contamination
found at the school and in private
wells. To see if the dots of responsibil-
ity do, in fact, connect, Boezeman's
consultant plans to conduct further
investigations on and off site.
Next Steps
IDEM staff continue to respond to
groundwater contamination issues in
the Roselawn area to identify and
eliminate exposure to groundwater
contamination and address commu-
nity questions and concerns. IDEM
staff formally requested the Indiana
State Department of Health to con-
duct a Health Consultation in order
to evaluate whether any health
effects have resulted from exposure
to MTBE in the school's water.
Boezeman has agreed to fund the
installation of a treatment system on
the school's well. Other options such
as a deeper well in another aquifer
are being considered. As an interim
measure, Boezeman has agreed to
install a carbon filter on the school
well to maintain hydraulic control of
the MTBE plume and to protect
downgradient wells. The water will
be discharged to surface water using
an NPDES permit. Boezeman plans
to conduct further delineation
around the wellhead and at the
Marathon station in hopes of finding
a source.
IDEM staff are concerned that
two additional wells located down-
gradient from the school's well—a
Generations Center, which provides
services for children and seniors, and
a church—are at risk. IDEM also
plans to request that U.S. EPA con-
duct a Spill Prevention Control and
Countermeasure (SPCC) inspection
as the facility, which because of the
size of its tanks is also subject to these
requirements under the Clean Water
Act.
Since this occurrence, IDEM has
implemented a program to effec-
tively communicate detection of cont-
aminants between both programs.
Seven other public water supplies
were found to show MTBE detection
in the two years since MTBE testing
began. Of those, only two have sig-
nificant levels. Indiana recently
passed a resolution virtually banning
the use of MTBE by July 23, 2004,
allowing only trace amounts of the
chemical. •
28
-------
June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
EPA Announces $3.8 Million in USTfields Grants to 26 States and 3 Tribes
On July 1, 2002, U.S. EPA announced 40 pilots totaling $3.8 million in grants to 26 states and three tribes to clean
up properties contaminated from leaking underground storage tanks. These USTfield pilot projects involve
abandoned or underused industrial and commercial properties with perceived or actual contamination from
petroleum that has leaked from USTs. Petroleum contamination has generally been excluded from funding under the
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and has not, therefore, been cov-
ered under EPA's Brownfields Program.
Each of the pilots will receive up to $100,000 for assessing and cleaning up petroleum contamination from USTs. The
grants are being awarded to states and tribes to demonstrate what can be accomplished in the assessment and cleanup—
and ultimate reuse—of petroleum-impacted sites when federal, state, tribal, local and private entities work together. The
pilots are intended to provide states, tribes, municipalities, and communities with useful information and strategies to
promote a unified approach to site assessment, environmental cleanup, and redevelopment of contaminated properties.
In awarding these grants EPA intends to spur partnerships among state and local governments, community groups,
investors, and developers to get sites cleaned up and ready for community use instead of remaining a liability to the com-
munity and a continuing threat to public health and the environment.
These 40 pilots, combined with EPA's original 10 USTfields pilots, brings to 50 the total of USTfields pilot locations
nationwide. For more information, visit EPA's Web site at http: / / www.epa.gov/oust/ustfield .
The 40 USTfields pilots and the amount of their grants are:
Alabama
Selma- $100,000
California
Los Angeles -$100,000
Hnlnrarln
wUIUIQUU
Denver -$100,000
Florida
1 1UI IUU
Clearwater- $100,000
Escambia County - $1 00,000
St. Petersburg -$100,000
Idaho
Smelterville- $100,000
Illinois
Freeport- $100,000
Waukegan- $84,870
Indiana
Indianapolis -$100,000
South Bend -$100,000
Iowa
Clinton -$100,000
DesMoines- $100,000
Louisiana
Baton Rouge -$90,000
Westwego - $88,000
Maine
Hiram, Portland, Westbrook,
Lewiston - $50,000
Michigan
Detroit -$100,000
Kalamazoo- $100,000
Minnesota
Minneapolis -$100,000
Mississippi
Jackson -$100,000
Missouri
St. Louis -$100,000
Montana
Billings -$100,000
Nevada
Mineral County -$100,000
New Hampshire
Northumberland - $85,000
Statewide -$50,000
New Jersey
Hudson County -$100,000
New York
Yonkers- $99,801
North Carolina
Concord -$100,000
Ohio
Youngstown and Boardman -
$100,000
Pennsylvania
Lancaster County - $1 00,000
Philadelphia County -
$100,000
South Carolina
Greenville -$100,000
Tennessee
City of Kingsport - $1 00,000
Texas
Houston -$100,000
Washington State
Rosalia -$33,000
Seattle -$100,000
Tacoma- $100,000
Tribes
Crow Tribe - Pryor Trading
Post -$100,000 in Montana
Gila River Indian Community
- St. John's Mission
-$100,000 in Arizona
Metlakatla Indian Community
-$100,000 in Alaska
With Connecticut fast approaching total compliance
with LIST '98 Deadline requirements for equip-
ment, the enforcement focus is switching to LIST
operational compliance. The state is reinforcing the critical
importance that leak detection and prevention play in
safeguarding human health and the environment from the
hazards of gasoline pollution. Owners and operators must
have proper leak detection mechanisms in place, properly
monitor their ATGs and line leak detectors, and review daily
inventories weekly. The Connecticut Department of
Environmental Protection's enforcement program chose
to convey its message through a bus placard outreach
campaign similar to that used prior to the '98 Deadline.
Funding for the informational campaign was made
possible by a supplemental environmental project, included
as part of a large civil penalty in an enforcement action
against a major petroleum distributor that had egregiously violated LIST release detection regulations. The company failed to
report the leak in a timely manner and also failed to immediately investigate and correct the leak as required.
For up to 12 months, the bus placards will carry three versions of the operational compliance message and will appear in every
major city and transit corridor in the state. Press releases and half-page newspaper ads will supplement the project in certain areas
of the state. •
29
-------
LUSTLinc Bulletin 41 • June 2002
LUST Remediation System
Evaluations to be
Undertaken by TIO
OUST has teamed with OSWER's
Technology Innovation Office (TIO)
to conduct Remediation System Eval-
uations (RSEs) at LUST sites. RSEs are
conducted to determine if a current
remediation system at a site is operat-
ing efficiently and cleaning the site up
in the fastest way possible. TIO has
promoted the use of RSEs at 25 Super-
fund sites to date and has shown that
a potential savings of $5 million at
these sites could be expected if recom-
mendations from the RSE team were
implemented. Region 2 will be con-
ducting a pilot project at one or two
locations in New York State, where a
review team will look at pump-and-
treat sites that have been languishing.
This project is expected to begin in
late summer.
Pay For Performance
Toolbox Unveiled
The initial version of the Pay For Perfor-
mance (PFP) Toolbox on the OUST Web
site was unveiled and demonstrated at
the 2002 UST/ LUST National Confer-
ence. PFP is a type of performance-
based contracting that states and
owners/operators can use to contract
for LUST cleanups. The PFP Toolbox is
designed to assist state regulators in
developing a PFP program and pro-
vides information on how to use PFP
contracting, develop a PFP contract,
implement a PFP program, and
expand an existing PFP program. In
addition, the Toolbox provides exam-
ples of actual PFP contracts used in
existing state LUST PFP programs,
PFP presentations prepared by state
staff, and articles written by state staff
about PFP performance from LUST-
Line. OUST will update the Web site as
states provide more information on
their LUST PFP programs. The PFP
Toolbox can be seen at www.epa.
gov/oust/pfp/toolbox.htm.
OUST Joins Industrial
Triage Project with Energy
Department
OUST has joined in an interagency
agreement with the U.S. Department
of Energy to refine a "triage system"
that communities plagued with Super-
fund, brownfields, and USTfields sites
can use to help prioritize these sites for
reuse/revitalization. The project will
examine and refine Industrial Triage
software developed by the Argonne
National Laboratory. The software
was designed to allow local parties to
combine readily available data about
property characteristics, economic and
demographic infrastructure, environ-
mental concerns, and financing con-
siderations in a way that generates a
meaningful understanding of potential
brownfields or USTfields sites. Once
refinements are completed and data
collected, the database can be used by
interested parties to evaluate and
select sites for reuse, based on real
estate market assessment, environ-
mental analysis, economic incentives,
or unique contributions of the commu-
nity. The Industrial Triage system can
subsequently help these parties
streamline the application of limited
assessment and corrective action dol-
lars to sites with the greatest reuse
potential.
Five Case Studies of
USTfields Pilots Available
on OUST Web site
A new case study on the Utah UST-
fields pilot is now available on the
OUST Web site, along with case stud-
ies of the pilot activities in NH, NJ, IL,
and OR. Each case study gives a back-
ground on the project as well as a
description of the accomplishments to
date and challenges the pilot has
faced. The newest case study explains
how the State of Utah is partnering
with Salt Lake City to assess, clean.
up, and reuse a site in the western
part of the city. Salt Lake Neighbor-
hood Housing Services plans to build
affordable housing on the site once
cleanup activities are complete.
REGION 2:
UST Enforcement Actions
EPA Region 2 reports that it reached a
$175,000 settlement in action against
Super Value, Inc., for UST violations
at four facilities in New Jersey. Super
Value had failed to permanently close
20 of its UST systems and to report
the release of petroleum at one of its
facilities. The settlement also requires
Super Value to complete permanent
closures and site assessments at the
four facilities that were the subject of
the complaint and at all UST systems
owned and/or operated by it in the
State of New Jersey that have been
out of service for greater than 12
months.
In another case, a District Court
granted a Motion for Default Judg-
ment against an individual and three
companies that had owned and oper-
ated a gas station in Brooklyn, NY. The
defendants had failed to upgrade or
close their six substandard UST sys-
tems and repeatedly failed to comply
with relevant regulations concerning
release detection and release detection
recordkeeping. In this case, the Order
and Judgment of Default issued by the
judge requires the defendants to pay a
$300,000 penalty.
Florida's Petroleum Storage Tank Facility Inspection Guide.—
Florida's Broward County Department of Planning and Environmental Protection and the state Department
of Environmental Protection (DEP) have teamed up to produce Your Petroleum Storage Tank Facility
Inspection Guide: How Well Do You Know Your Petroleum Storage Distribution System? This 24-page
guide was developed by Broward County UST inspector Astley A. Johnson in an attempt to simplify the
UST regulations for the regulated community in Broward County.
The guide highlights the key elements of a facility inspection and emphasizes the importance of
maintenance and recordkeeping. It contains full-color illustrations of all aspects of UST and AST systems.
The Florida DEP adapted the publication for statewide application and provided a copy to every regulated
UST facility owner/operator in the state. Copies can be downloaded from the Florida DEP Web site at:
www.dep.state.fl.us/waste/categories/tanks/default.htm.
YOUR penrat-euM STORAGE
TANK FACILITY
INSPECTION GUID€
HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR
PETROLEUM STORAGE AND
DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM?
30
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June 2002 • LUSTLine Bulletin 41
Oxygenates
San Francisco Jury Says Oil Companies Knew
of MTBE's Hazards Early On
In April 2002, a San Francisco jury
found that gasoline with the addi-
tive MTBE is a defective product
and that Shell Oil Co., Atlantic Rich-
field Chemical Co. (now owned by
Lyondell Chemical), and Tosco Corp.
(now part of Phillips Petroleum)
were aware of the chemical's dan-
gers but withheld the information
when they put it on the market. The
Superior Court jury made its finding
in a product liability case brought by
the South Tahoe Public Utility Dis-
trict over contamination of the dis-
trict's groundwater. The district sued
in 1998 after MTBE pollution forced
it to close a third of its drinking-
water wells.
In its verdict, the jury said the
companies had placed a defective
product on the market when they
began selling gasoline with MTBE.
The jury also found that Shell and
Lyondell acted with malice when
they withheld information about the
chemical. Lawyers for the South Lake
Tahoe district had presented evi-
dence that the companies promoted
MTBE even though they knew it
could contaminate water supplies.
^Lawyers for the South Lake Tahoe
T?T - \- ,, i
district had presented evidence that
fcr. - '. . ' ,t . '. , 1
the companies promoted MTBE even
•f > 'i t A U i *i . 1
s, though they knew it could
£T contaminate.watersupplies.
™ * ~ -> ^~ * i
This landmark verdict came after
seven weeks of deliberation follow-
ing a five-month trial. Dozens of such
cases are pending against the nation's
largest oil companies, and could
expose the industry to billions of dol-
lars in cleanup costs and punitive
damages. The trial is now in phase
two, where damages and the ques-
tion of whether MTBE was the cause
of groundwater pollution in South
Lake Tahoe will be decided.
South Lake Tahoe is a resort
community with a population of
28,000 that swells to 50,000 in the
summer. It is one of the communities
hardest hit by MTBE pollution. The
city closed 12 of its 34 drinking-water
wells because of the MTBE contami-
nation. The South Lake Tahoe utility
estimates that it has spent more than
$9 million, which doesn't include the
cost of treating the tainted water. The
cost to remove MTBE from the water
supply is estimated at $45 million.
In 1998, South Lake Tahoe sued
31 companies, alleging that their
defective product spoiled drinking
water. Twenty-six companies already
settled for $33 million in 2001.
Shell and Tosco were named
because they owned the gas stations
along Highway 50 where USTs
leaked MTBE. Arco Chemical manu-
facturers MTBE. •
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