Stimulus aiding cleanup of old gas storage tanks

A leaking underground storage tank near Summerville and Menlo, Ga., leached petroleum into town water pipes about 10 years ago, contaminating drinking water for a number of residents.

"The water line ran right through the dispenser area of an old gas station, and it burst into the water line. It even got in the service lines for some houses," said Lisa Lewis, a corrective action unit manager with the Georgia Underground Storage Tank Management program of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division.

Emergency repairs got clean drinking water to the residents there almost immediately after the problem was discovered, she said, but the old gas tanks have remained in the ground -- with officials waiting for money to remove them.

Leaking underground storage tanks are not that uncommon, and environmental officials across the country are battling time and rust to keep seeping petroleum products from contaminating more water lines and groundwater systems. The Southeast has an estimated 29,000 such tanks.

This year, with stimulus money flowing from Washington, D.C., Georgia and Tennessee officials hope to unearth and clean up nearly 100 leaking and abandoned underground tanks, including the one between Summerville and Menlo.

In recent weeks, Georgia environmental officials learned they soon will receive almost $5 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to remove about 48 "orphan" underground storage tanks that have leaked, or are thought to be in danger of leaking, leftover petroleum products.

"We call them 'orphan' because there is no viable responsible party or payer to clean them up," Ms. Lewis said. "Most of them were gas stations or auto repair places."

Tennessee officials announced last week they expect to receive $4.6 million to use toward the cleanup of 44 leaking tank sites across the Volunteer State.

"Most of the sites are already known to have had a release of petroleum to the environment, and many still contain petroleum underground storage tanks that have been abandoned by their owners without being properly closed," said Tisha Calabrese-Benton, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

The money is federal stimulus cash from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, designed to clean up problems and put Americans back to work.

Ms. Lewis said another of the Northwest Georgia tank cleanups will occur in Villanow in Walker County. Georgia normally has about $1 million to $1.5 million a year with which to clean up orphan tanks, she said.

The EPA estimates there are thousands of orphan tanks across the country, threatening groundwater that serves as drinking water for nearly one-third of all Americans, agency spokeswoman Kara Belle said.

More than 152,000 underground storage tanks are in the Southeast -- most functioning and maintained properly, according to environmental officials.

Last year in the seven-state Southeastern region, 3,204 tanks were cleaned up, but 1,661 releases were reported.

The newly announced stimulus money gives Southeastern regulators 4.5 times the typical annual funding for those cleanups, said TDEC's Stan Boyd, director of the state's underground storage tank regulatory division.

All of the recovery stimulus funds for tank cleanup must be spent by Sept. 30, 2011, and at least 35 percent must be obligated and 15 percent spent in the first year, according to EPA officials.