Chemical Tanks Lack Spill Prevention Rules Decades After Legislation Authorized Them

摘要

The Environmental Protection Agency does not have spill prevention requirements for owners of aboveground storage tanks containing hazardous substances, a regulatory gap exposed to the nation after an aging tank leaked thousands of gallons of chemicals into West Virginia's Elk River on Jan. 9, contaminating a public drinking water system serving 300,000 people. What is not well known is that since 1972, the EPA has had statutory authority to promulgate spill prevention regulations for such tanks. But no such regulations exist due to many factors, including the relative rarity of chemical aboveground tanks compared with tanks holding petroleum products, the emergence of bigger issues such as the discovery of hundreds of thousands of leaking underground tanks in the late 1970s and 1980s, and the regulatory choices made by every administration since 1980.