United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Solid Waste and Emergency
Response
(OS-420 WF)
EPA 510-F-93-005
April 1993
UST Program Facts
Leaking Underground
Storage Tank Cleanup
Why tanks leak
Until the 1980s the design, installation, and
operation of most underground storage tank
(UST) systems made them prone to leaks,
spills and overfills. Steel tanks and piping
corroded. Poor installation and overfilling
caused many other releases.
National Corrective Action Activity
184,000
Confirmed
Releases
129,000
Cleanups
Initiated
55,000
Cleanups
Completed
DEC. 1989
JUNE 1992
How leaks were detected in the past
Many leaks went undetected until
drinking water wells were contaminated or
fumes filled a basement, posing serious
risks to human health, safety, and the
environment.
The challenge to respond to
leaking USTs quickly
Local, state, and federal governments
want owners and operators to prevent new
releases by replacing old, unsafe tanks
with more protective equipment As of
October 1, 1992 nearly 184,000 releases
have been confirmed, and the number of
confirmed releases is expected to grow at
a rate of about 50,000 sites per year until
it levels off at a total of about 320,000
sites.
Risks from UST releases
About 90 percent of regulated USTs hold
petroleum. When petroleum and similar
products leak from an UST or its piping
they contaminate the soil around and
below the tanks:
• Liquids may travel downward
through soil to pollute
groundwater, a source of drinking
water for about half of all
Americans.
Vapors from leaking volatile
liquids can also accumulate in
basements, sewers and utility
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conduits, sometimes causing fires
and explosions.
• Breathing these vapors can pose a
long-term health threat because they
may contain harmful substances
such as benzene, a carcinogen.
Cleanups are needed to protect human health
and safety and to preserve drinking water
supplies.
Development of the cleanup program
In 1984 and again in 1986 Congress passed
UST legislation that now comprises Subtitle
1 of the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act. The law directed EPA to
establish programs that would prevent new
releases and help to clean up old ones. Part
of this job was writing regulations that
spelled out how tank owners and operators
should respond to a release, including:
• reporting a release,
• removing its source,
• mitigating fire and safety hazards,
• investigating the extent of the leak,
• cleaning up soil and groundwatcr as
needed to protect human health and
the environment.
EPA developed these regulations, and the
program as a whole, to be flexible, to foster
innovation, and to be implemented from the
start by state and local agencies. Every state
and many local governments now have
active UST cleanup programs.
Challenges of a growing cleanup
caseload
Tank owners and operators, and
sometimes government agencies, have
completed about 55,000 corrective actions
(see illustration). However, releases have
been reported at a rate of almost 1,000
per week over the last two years - over
three times faster than they have been
cleaned up.
Cleanup program staff have to oversee
increasing caseloads of active cleanups,
usually conducted by cooperative tank
owners, their contractors, and consultants.
At the same time, they face increasing
backlogs of sites awaiting a response and
additional demands for guidance and
oversight.
The increase has adverse impacts on the
environment, and the economy, as well as
the programs themselves:
Sites with releases in the planning
stages of corrective action and
those awaiting a response
gradually become more difficult
and costly to clean up.
Delays in the cleanup process
disrupt businesses and make
cleanups less affordable for many
owners, particularly small
businesses and small communities.
Regulators have difficulty
performing the inspections,
approving the plans, and
reviewing the reports they usually
use to follow progress at sites.
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Streamlining and new technologies
One of EPA's top priorities in the tank
program is to help state and local
governments make cleanups faster,
cheaper, and more effective. As a part of
this effort, EPA staff and consultants
encourage states to streamline cleanup
oversight processes:
They show state managers and
staff how to use flowcharts and
performance indicators to
document and analyze their
program.
They teach Total Quality
Management techniques to help
identify delays and other
opportunities for improvement.
• - They support state managers' and
staff's efforts to: develop
guidance materials; design
process changes to reduce delays
and paperwork; provide needed
training; host "consultants days"
where better communication with
those who plan and perform
cleanups improves the quality of
their work; and make other
improvements.
The main objective of streamlining
projects is broader, however: to
motivate, enable, and assist states to
continue making many other
improvements on their own.
EPA is also working to promote the use
of creative site assessment and cleanup
technologies in cooperative efforts with
contractors, consultants, tank owners, and
states. Even though some promising
techniques - such as field measurement
methods, air sparging, and soil vapor
extraction - have proven advantageous in
field applications, they are not yet widely
used across the country. EPA is using a
variety of research, training,
demonstration, and outreach projects to
increase the acceptance and use of
technologies that can help make cleanups
faster, less costly, or more effective.
Signs of progress
By streamlining cleanup oversight processes
and promoting wider use of more effective
technologies for site assessment and cleanup,
leading states have begun making
improvements, some of them dramatic:
• With EPA's support, leading states
have already cut delays in
permitting, site assessment,
corrective action, and reimbursement
processes.
• States are providing better guidance
to consultants and contractors, and
are improving the quality of needed
plans and reports, speeding up the
work, and cutting paperwork costs.
• A few programs are making
promising revisions to their
corrective action processes that
allow simple cleanups at low-risk
sites to proceed more quickly with
better guidance and reduced
oversight.
• As training and demonstration
projects progress, technologies such
as field measurement techniques,
soil vapor extraction, and
bioremediation arc gaining wider
acceptance in some states.
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These early successes have confirmed that
EPA's approach to addressing the cleanup
backlog can work, but they do not guarantee
success. That will take time and the
sustained commitment of more UST
programs and other stakeholders in the
cleanup process, from tank owners and
consultants to managers of other programs,
such as state assurance funds and those
permitting cleanups. Success will also
require that all stakeholders remain open to
change, take some risks, and work
cooperatively. EPA is committed to support
these efforts and to help meet the challenges
of UST cleanups.
Leaking Underground Storage Tank Cleanup is
one in a series of fact sheets about underground
storage tanks (USTs) and leaking USfs. The
series is designed to help EPA, other federal
officials, and state authorities answer the most
frequently asked questions about USTs with
consistent, accurate information in language the
layperson can understand. Keep the fact sheets
handy as a resource. This fact sheet addresses
federal regulations. You may need to refer to
applicable state or local regulations, as well.
For more information on UST publications, call
the RCRAISuperfund Hotline at 800 424-9346.
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