RALEIGH, N.C. -- A new state rule that will take effect next month in North Carolina is designed to prevent leaks from underground storage tanks that store fuel beneath gas stations. The new rule is an obscure part of the state's environmental law, but it has become an issue for some business owners, who say that it is an overzealous mandate aimed at a mostly imaginary problem, reported The Winston-Salem Journal.
The rule is similar to one that was enacted in California several years ago, the report said, and California and North Carolina are now the [image-nocss] only two states with such stringent requirements for the monitoring of USTs.
Despite its strictness, state officials said, the rule is an important step to protect groundwater, which can be contaminated if a UST containing thousands of gallons of gasoline springs a leak. About half of the state's residents rely on groundwater for their water supply, and its necessity is particularly apparent this year, as the severe drought has depleted surface-water resources, said the newspaper.
Fuel leaks from USTs are not just environmentally harmful; they are also expensive to clean up, Grover Nicholson, who oversees UST issues for the N.C. Department of Environment & Natural Resources, told the paper.
The new rule, he said, has a specific purpose. If there is a release of fuel, then it will be identified before it reaches the environment, and fixed before it reaches the environment, Nicholson said.
Since 1988, the state has spent $438 million cleaning up releases of fuel into the environment, Nicholson said. During that time, there have been more than 21,000 such releases in North Carolinaan average of about 1,000 a year.
Owners and manufacturers of USTs, however, said that the risk of leaks is overblown. Most incidents of contamination come from aboveground spills or leaks in piping, not from leaks in the tanks themselves, they said. Critics also said that the new rule will make it more onerous to install steel tanks, which many businesses prefer over tanks made of fiberglass. Steel tanks are far more common than fiberglass, said the report.
Under the rulewhich applies only to new tanks, not to existing ones already in the groundthe state will no longer allow the most common method of checking for leaks in steel tanks. That method involves placing a small sensor in the space between a tank's inner wall and outer wall. The sensor detects whether any liquideither fuel or groundwatergets into the space between the two walls.
State officials said that the sensor method is not 100% accurate. The new rule will require a more unusual method of monitoring leaks in new steel tanksby creating a vacuum or monitoring the pressure in the space between the tank's two walls.
Gas stations installing new USTs will now have to switch to this new method, or switch to fiberglass tanks, said the report. Either way, the tanks are likely to be more expensive, it added.
Officials with Stoystown, Pa.-based Highland Tank said they believe that the rule will cripple the business in North Carolina. A standard 20,000-gallon tank that would have cost $18,000 may now cost $23,000 because of the new rule, said Charles Frey, Highland Tank's vice president. Some customers have canceled orders, Frey said, and he fears that when gas stations do buy new tanks, the extra cost will eventually trickle down to consumers.
It's going to make the service station cost more money to own and operate, and the only way they recover from that is charging more for coffee or charging more for gas, Frey told the paper.
Doug Howey, the government-affairs director for the N.C. Petroleum Marketers Association, said he doubts that the rule will cause any increase in gasoline prices. Nobody likes change, Howey told the Journal, but he added that most tank owners can live with the new rule.
He also said that, like Frey, he does not believe that leaky tanks are a widespread problem. That's the question I've been trying to ask. What problem are we trying to solve here? Howey said. I haven't gotten a satisfactory answer to what problem we're trying to solve.
Molly Diggins, the director of the N.C. Sierra Club, said that the state's historic drought this year has raised the importance of taking more steps to protect groundwater. The cost and difficulty of successfully cleaning up a leaking underground storage tank, particularly if it's gone undetected, is enormous, Diggins told the paper. It's a far better investment to try to prevent it on the front end.
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