Almost every gas station eventually pollutes the earth beneath it, experts told Grist. The main culprit: the underground storage tanks that hold tens of thousands of gallons of fuel, one of the most common sources of groundwater pollution. Typically, two or three of these giant, submarine-shaped tanks are buried under a station to store the gasoline and diesel that gets piped to the pump. A large tank might be 55 feet long and hold as many as 30,000 gallons; a typical tank might hold 10,000 gallons. Leaks can occur at any point — in the storage tank itself, in the gas pumps, and in the pipes that connect them. Hazardous chemicals can then spread rapidly through the soil, seeping into groundwater, lakes, or rivers. Even a dribble can pollute a wide area. Ten gallons of gasoline can contaminate 12 million gallons of groundwater — a significant risk, given that groundwater is the source of drinking water for nearly half of all Americans.
As a result, time-consuming cleanup efforts are unfolding all across the country, with remediation for a single gas station sometimes topping $1 million. Leaks are such a huge liability that they’ve led to a high-stakes game of hot potato, where no one wants to pay for the mess — not the gas station owners, not the insurance companies that provide coverage for tanks, not the oil companies that supply the fuel. In some states, polluters have shifted tens of millions of dollars in remediation costs onto taxpayers. Roughly 60,000 contaminated sites are still waiting to be cleaned up, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA — and those are just the ones that have been found. Washington state has about 2,500 in line, one of the biggest backlogs in the country.
Don't know if every state has a list like this, but the Texas list shows about 1,100 known "Leaking Petroleum Storage Tanks" that are listed as open, the oldest known going back to 1972, just 50...
Don't know if every state has a list like this, but the Texas list shows about 1,100 known "Leaking Petroleum Storage Tanks" that are listed as open, the oldest known going back to 1972, just 50 years of leaking with no resolution.
When the "who pays" question goes unanswered, the answer is always "everybody." So it's understandable that the hot potato mentioned in the article often ends up on the taxpayer's plate, but I...
When the "who pays" question goes unanswered, the answer is always "everybody."
So it's understandable that the hot potato mentioned in the article often ends up on the taxpayer's plate, but I wonder if a better directed approach would be to time-shift the issue to that same industry: maybe we can't in practice squeeze enough funds out of current or previous owners of these properties, but whenever someone wants to open a new gas station, they should not only be held to more stringent tank construction requiments than in the past, but should also have pay a significant fee into a fund for cleanup of the old sites.
That sounds like a great solution, which is precisely why I think it won't happen any time soon. In addition to actually cleaning up these thousands of contaminated sites, it would have the...
but whenever someone wants to open a new gas station, they should not only be held to more stringent tank construction requiments than in the past, but should also have pay a significant fee into a fund for cleanup of the old sites
That sounds like a great solution, which is precisely why I think it won't happen any time soon. In addition to actually cleaning up these thousands of contaminated sites, it would have the secondary benefit of making it more difficult and expensive to open new gas stations. So fewer new gas stations would be built. Meaning that existing gas stations would be able to charge more for gas (now that there is less competition), raising gas prices and incentivizing people to choose alternative means of transportation (like electric vehicles or public transportation).
But of course, to enact something like that you'd have to go against the millions (billions?) of dollars worth of lobbying done by petroleum companies against exactly those sorts of regulations. And unfortunately most of us don't have millions or billions of dollars laying around, so these things basically get swept under the rug until they affect the bottom line of someone with millions and billions lying around, like the petroleum companies themselves or some other billionaire corporation.
Back in college one summer I worked construction for an Environmental Engineering company. Every job I was on was former gas stations and was to "clean up" the contaminated soil beneath. The...
Back in college one summer I worked construction for an Environmental Engineering company. Every job I was on was former gas stations and was to "clean up" the contaminated soil beneath. The easiest method was digging out the contaminated soil and simply replace it with clean soil. That only works if there's not a concrete slab still there. If there is, we had drill/auger 15-20' PVC straight down to pump positive air pressure.
Then cut out large chunks of it to burrow vertical, slotted PVC 3' deep with negative pressure to suck up the fumes which went on maybe a month or more.
Don't know if every state has a list like this, but the Texas list shows about 1,100 known "Leaking Petroleum Storage Tanks" that are listed as open, the oldest known going back to 1972, just 50 years of leaking with no resolution.
https://www.tceq.texas.gov/remediation/pst_rp
When the "who pays" question goes unanswered, the answer is always "everybody."
So it's understandable that the hot potato mentioned in the article often ends up on the taxpayer's plate, but I wonder if a better directed approach would be to time-shift the issue to that same industry: maybe we can't in practice squeeze enough funds out of current or previous owners of these properties, but whenever someone wants to open a new gas station, they should not only be held to more stringent tank construction requiments than in the past, but should also have pay a significant fee into a fund for cleanup of the old sites.
That sounds like a great solution, which is precisely why I think it won't happen any time soon. In addition to actually cleaning up these thousands of contaminated sites, it would have the secondary benefit of making it more difficult and expensive to open new gas stations. So fewer new gas stations would be built. Meaning that existing gas stations would be able to charge more for gas (now that there is less competition), raising gas prices and incentivizing people to choose alternative means of transportation (like electric vehicles or public transportation).
But of course, to enact something like that you'd have to go against the millions (billions?) of dollars worth of lobbying done by petroleum companies against exactly those sorts of regulations. And unfortunately most of us don't have millions or billions of dollars laying around, so these things basically get swept under the rug until they affect the bottom line of someone with millions and billions lying around, like the petroleum companies themselves or some other billionaire corporation.
Back in college one summer I worked construction for an Environmental Engineering company. Every job I was on was former gas stations and was to "clean up" the contaminated soil beneath. The easiest method was digging out the contaminated soil and simply replace it with clean soil. That only works if there's not a concrete slab still there. If there is, we had drill/auger 15-20' PVC straight down to pump positive air pressure.
Then cut out large chunks of it to burrow vertical, slotted PVC 3' deep with negative pressure to suck up the fumes which went on maybe a month or more.