Fuel tanks could be leaking (Cold War relics face FEMA checks)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is trying to figure out if more than 150 underground fuel tanks -- including one each in Clifton and Lodi -- are leaking diesel fuel into the soil and groundwater. First, though, they need to find out where they are. The agency knows of at least 150 underground tanks, some of which were built for federal emergency storage dating back to the 1950s, that need to be inspected for leaks, according to spokeswoman Debbie Wing. FEMA also is trying to determine by September whether an additional 124 tanks are underground or aboveground and whether they are leaking.

FEMA has known since at least the 1990s that tanks under its supervision around the country could be leaking fuel, according to Associated Press interviews and research. But the news of the tanks' existence came as a surprise to local officials. "I've never, ever heard about it before," said Clifton Mayor James Anzaldi. "I've never heard anyone talk about it, and that goes all the way back to the '70s when I worked for the city."

Representatives from the regional office of the Environmental Protection Agency and from the state Department of Environmental Protection also had never heard about the underground tanks. In Lodi, officials were similarly baffled by the news that an underground fuel tank may be buried in the borough. "This is the first I'm hearing about this," said Councilwoman Karen Viscana, the former mayor.

Mayor Marc Schrieks, a lifelong resident, said he also was unaware of any underground fuel tanks, calling it "alarming." "It would behoove the federal government to let the local government know where these things are," Schrieks said. "We'll do whatever we need to do to ascertain the location of these tanks and press for the federal government to fund for the removal." Schrieks said he would contact the borough attorney and determine whether to take legal recourse

There has been no documentation of reported leaks or harm to communities from the FEMA tanks, Wing said, although former agency officials and congressional testimony suggest that the federal tanks have long been seen as a problem. Many of these tanks were built to store 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel and placed around the country at the height of the Cold War back in the 1960s to fuel electric generators that could sustain emergency broadcasts by radio stations in case of a nuclear attack or other catastrophe. Made of steel, the tanks inevitably rust over time and allow fuel to escape.

Steel tanks left in the ground for decades rot like Swiss cheese, said Pat Coyne, director of business development for Environmental Data Resources Inc. Coyne said a joke in the industry is: "What percentage of steel tanks leak? 100 percent!" In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the government insisted on better-made tanks. The underground tanks of today must have safety measures including leak detection and an extra shell made with material resistant to gasoline, diesel and ethanol, Coyne said.

The FEMA tanks are part of a larger problem. More than 500,000 leaking storage tanks -- most of which are filled with fuel and oil -- are buried across the country, according to Environmental Data Resources, based in Milford, Conn. Because they're underground, leaking tanks can go undetected for years. If diesel leaks into drinking water, affected people could be at a higher risk of cancer, kidney damage and nervous system disorders, said Rochelle Cardinale, one of the lead coordinators for underground tank cleanup in Iowa. A gallon of fuel can contaminate 1 million gallons of water.

FEMA says the hundreds of federal tanks have not always been its responsibility. The Federal Communications Commission also has had oversight, although FCC spokesman Clyde Ensslin said the commission believed FEMA was responsible for monitoring and maintaining the tanks. FEMA said it spent $8 million in the 1990s removing and repairing some of them. FEMA now acknowledges that it is the agency responsible for all of the tanks in question. But Senate testimony from 1992 suggests FEMA has long tried to avoid having to deal with the tanks.

"For years FEMA resisted acknowledging the problem or seeking funds for remediation," former FEMA union President Leo Bosner said in 1992 before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. He said then that there were more than 2,000 underground oil storage tanks that FEMA had paid for or acquired over the years. But FEMA came out with a legal opinion that year concluding that it wasn't responsible for the tanks. Congress eventually decided it didn't matter which agency owned the tanks -- FEMA would fund tank inspection, removal and replacement, said Bill Cumming, who at the time ran FEMA's ethics program.

FEMA did eventually receive reports about leaking tanks, said Jane Bullock, who was the agency's chief of staff in the Clinton administration. Many of FEMA's out-of-use fuel tanks today have yet to be inspected because officials only recently finished going through decades of paperwork from the different federal agencies that at one point participated in the emergency broadcasting program. "We are committed to upholding our obligations to remediate, remove or upgrade them as necessary," FEMA spokesman Dan Stoneking told the AP. "We believe in adhering to any relevant environmental rule or law and will do so."

FEMA disclosed the problems to the EPA in August 2007, a step that could lead to reduced penalties against FEMA. In May, the EPA formally requested information about the status of the tanks. FEMA will determine what to do with the defunct tanks -- such as remove them or fill them with sand -- on a case-by-case basis, because of varying state laws. In the 1960s the federal government gave fuel tanks and generators to radio stations across the country so that vital information could be broadcast during an emergency.

The program was managed by the FCC in some parts of the country, and elsewhere by the former Civil Defense Preparedness Agency. Broadcast stations volunteered for the program, and by 1979 about 700 stations participated. When FEMA was created in 1979, it took over programs run by the civil defense agency. Broadcast stations began to drop out of the program, and funding was slowly eliminated between 1987 and 1994.

This is an excercise in guilt and navel-gazing.

If there are tanks, and if they are leaking, it is only the lifeblood of America trying to find its way back to the place from whence it came.

Just leave it alone already.

Thanks for the post. This is quite interesting to me. There is much I can relate to.

In the late 80s, early 90s we worked with FEMA to provide a degree of EMP protection to Emergency Broadcast Stations (EBSs) and Emergency Operating Centers (EOCs). FEMA did not have the funds to provide a military type of hardening, so they relied heavily on surge protection technology. This program died as part of the “Peace Dividend”.

We also had an SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) program to develop an instrument for finding lost underground storage tanks (LUSTS). Geophex built what can be described as a kind of mapping metal detector which I used for field work in some the Chicago parks on the lake front which had been Nike anti aircraft missile sites. Found a number of clear suspects, but do not know if anything ever done with them.

Geophex later contracted with the United Nations weapons inspectors for geophysical surveys in Iraq in around 1997 to 98. They found all sorts of interesting things using the instrument they developed for us. This included significant quantities of Saddam’s atomic weapon program on pallets, wrapped in plastic, buried in the desert.

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