National Petroleum News (NPN) has been the independent voice of the petroleum industry since 1909 as the opposition to Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. So, motor fuels marketing and retail is not just a sideline for us, it’s our core competency.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/31797
MARKETING & SUPPLY BY DEBRARESCHKE Questions surrounding leaking underground storage tank prevention LUST FUNDING AND ENFORCEMENT Environmental Protection Agency’s underground storage tank program. Since the mid-1980s, environmental concerns A have mounted around the effects of gasoline leak- ing from underground storage tanks. In 1984, legislation in the form of Subtitle I of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act required the EPA to develop programs to address the issues. However, the EPA and states lacked the funding to oversee cleanup activities when the owners failed to do so. Congress then established the Leaking Underground Storage Tank (LUST) Trust Fund, which is financed by a 0.1 cent tax on each gallon of motor fuel sold in the U.S., although this provision has recently expired and is up for renewal in Congress. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 addressed the LUST program and established new requirements for states and tank owners to ensure that all USTs are compliant with federal regulations. States are now required to inspect every tank at least once every three years and must report, along with the federal government and tribes, the status of the compliance of these tanks, including ones they own. Additionally, a product delivery cannot be made to a known non-compliant UST. Also, tank operators must be appropriately trained according to their responsibilities. The EPA states that at the end of fiscal year 2010, there were approximately 597,000 federally-regu- lated, active USTs at about 215,000 sites across the country. Through the LUST fund, the EPA relies on state programs to enforce these new mandates. “Money is rarely used for cleanups of sites,” said Dan Gilligan, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America. “The lion’s share goes to administrative programs.” The dollars that actually 14 MAY/JUNE 2011 CHALLENGING ECONOMY WITH tightening federal and state bud- gets is working to make an uncer- tain environment for regulating and enforcing the rules of the U.S. go toward cleanups are usually for orphaned sites, he said. However, the PMAA is still grateful for the working administrative programs. “State agencies are important to keep prac- tices in place and to deal with regulators locally,” Gilligan said. Without those funds going to state program administrations, fees could possibly be raised on tank owners. The National Association of Convenience Stores has identified the new mandates as a possible issue for retailers if additional federal funding is not made available. NACS warned in its recent “Brief Guide to NACS Government Relations Issues” that if states struggle to comply, they might abandon their programs, forcing retailers to be directly accountable to federal enforcement. According to the EPA’s website, in FY 2009, the UST prevention and cleanup programs received more than $100 million to prevent, detect, and clean up releases from federally-regulated USTs. “PMAA will be sending out a letter to the Hill urging Congress to release more of the funds,” said Sherri Cabrera, vice president of PMAA. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 had authorized $200 million to be awarded to the states’ UST programs each year, but so far only about $110-115 million actually gets sent out. “Our petroleum marketers actually put in about $190 million.” But if increase in funding doesn’t happen, Cabrera said states should be allowed more flexibility on how they run their programs. In recent years, the programs have received a bit of a boost in funding. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 provided a one-time allocation of $200 million to assess and clean up UST leaks. Almost 90 percent of the money was provided directly to states, territories, and tribes to implement their prevention and cleanup programs. In the EPA’s FY 2010 Annual Report on the Underground Storage Tank Program, states and NPN Magazine n www.npnweb.com