Petroleum tanks leak toxic legacy

PUBLISHED SUNDAY, MARCH 17, 2002
Petroleum tanks leak toxic legacy 
Environment: Protecting our water
Scott Streater
Pensacola NewsJournal

Beneath your feet, out of sight while you water your lawn or play with your children, is one of the worst pollution problems in Florida.

More than 22,000 underground petroleum tanks have leaked millions of gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel, jeopardizing the underground aqui-fers where 92 percent of the state`s population gets its drinking water.

Workers from WRS Infrastucture and Environmental in Tampa dig in preparation for removing a large petroleum tank beside U.S. 29 just north of Interstate 10.

Yet prior to 1986, anyone could dig a hole and bury a tank. No regulations. No inspections. No fees.
Tanks were buried on military bases, railroad yards, school bus depots, farms and even back yards. And then they were forgotten.

As long as there have been cars and gas stations, this stuff has been leaking into the ground. That`s about 80 years, said Michael Ashey, chief of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection`s Bureau of Petroleum Storage Systems. We`ve got sites where there hasn`t been a gas station in 30 or 40 years, and when we go there it`s still contaminated after all these years.

The result is startling. In Northwest Florida, more than 1,200 leaking tanks have created massive plumes that dwarf those from the Escambia Treating Co. and Agrico Chemical Co. Superfund hazardous waste sites in Pensacola. Those two plumes have sparked widespread health concerns and multimillion-dollar lawsuits.

The numerous petroleum plumes, by contrast, have largely gone unnoticed by all but local health experts and environmental regulators.

It`s like having hundreds of little Superfund sites dotting the landscape, said Dr. John Lanza, director of the Escambia County Health Department.

Local utilities fight a constant battle to keep petroleum out of residents` drinking water. Millions of dollars have been spent installing and maintaining filtration systems designed to keep the water safe and clean.

There have been numerous near-misses, including one incident where water in a Pensacola home contained so much gasoline that health officials feared the fumes could ignite.
The problem has prompted Florida to create the nation`s largest petroleum cleanup program, costing more than $100 million annually.

Locally, the Escambia County Health Department spends about $17 million a year cleaning leaking fuel tanks in the Panhandle.

By the time the whole mess is cleaned up over the next 30 years, the state will have spent an estimated $6.5 billion - a price tag for environmental damage in Florida rivaled only by the massive restoration of the Everglades.

Taxpayers foot much of the bill: You pay as much as 3 cents for every gallon of gasoline you purchase at the pump to support a state trust fund that helps pay for cleaning up these contaminated sites.

It`s our legacy we`re trying to clean up now, Lanza said.
Water threatened

Nowhere is the danger to the public`s water more acute than in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.
Virtually everything poured on the ground finds its way to the Sand-and-Gravel Aquifer, the source of local drinking water.

Endangering the aquifer are 808 leaking underground tanks in Escambia and Santa Rosa. 

There are petroleum plumes in the two-county area that cover many acres, and in some places the contamination is so concentrated that gasoline floats 3 feet thick on top of the groundwater.

More than one-third of the Escambia County Utilities Authority`s 31 active wells require expensive filtration systems to prevent petroleum and other pollutants from fouling its water. Two of the five wells operated by People`s Water Service Co. of Florida Inc. are filtered.

The ECUA has spent $6.6 million to install 11 filtration systems and spends another $385,000 a year to maintain the system, said Danny Majors, the Utilities Authority`s water production manager.
People`s Water Service has spent about $500,000 to install filters, and about $6,000 a year for operation and maintenance.

The two utilities supply about 93 percent of Escambia County`s drinking water.

It`s a burden, said Mark Cross, People`s Water Service manager. But this is just one of those environmental issues that no one gave a lot of thought to.

The situation is not as grim in Santa Rosa County, which does not have the same history of industrial activity as Escambia County.

Only the Navy`s Whiting Field in Milton has had to install filtration systems to remove benzene and other pollutants from the base`s water supply, according to state regulators.
Vulnerable supplies

A December 1999 study by the Northwest Florida Water Management District offered some sobering insight into the vulnerability of our drinking water.

Nine ECUA wells were contaminated with petroleum pollutants, and leaking gasoline storage tanks are the source, according to the $252,000 study co-sponsored by the Utilities Authority and DEP.

What`s more, it found 71 petroleum tanks located within Utilities Authority wellhead protection areas. More than half the wells within the area were contaminated with gasoline components or additives.

New public supply wells, the 162-page report concluded, should be located where groundwater does not lie under any underground storage tank.

Where they do, filters and routine water monitoring are enough to ensure the drinking water is clean, said John Pope, environmental manager of the DEP`s Drinking Water Section in Pensacola.
I feel it`s very safe, he said. It`s vulnerable and we have to take care of it, but the monitoring programs we have in place are sufficient to detect contamination when they occur and to treat it.

An Escambia County grand jury that studied local air and water quality disagreed, criticizing groundwater monitoring efforts in its June 1999 report: Most monitoring wells are not sited to help prevent contamination, but only to discover it, usually long after contamination occurs.

Many of the area`s public supply wells ... and even residential neighborhoods have been exposed to concentrated discharges of harmful substances creating risks to human health."

The cost

Florida`s residents already have paid $1.6 billion to address the problem since the Legislature created a petroleum cleanup program in 1986.

When the program began, environmental officials expected to find 3,000 leaking tanks.
They found five times that amount. Today, there are more than 22,000 leaking tanks - that state regulators are aware of.

The problem was a lot bigger than we thought it was, said Ashey, the DEP Bureau of Petroleum Storage Systems chief.

Adds Gordon Richmond, a professional engineer who heads the Escambia County Health Department`s petroleum cleanup program: We all thought the program would be over in about five years or so.
Locally, the Escambia County Health Department oversees cleanup work in Escambia, Santa Rosa, 
Okaloosa and Walton counties.

To date, the state has spent nearly $79 million cleaning 425 sites in the four counties. The majority of that money, about $37 million, has been spent in Escambia County.
All that money is just a drop in the bucket. It will cost:

An estimated $340 million to clean the remaining 1,135 petroleum-contaminated sites in Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton counties.

Almost $5 billion to clean 16,754 sites statewide, more than half of which have not yet been touched.

At current funding levels, it will take at least three decades to finish cleaning all of the state`s contaminated sites.

That`s the bad news. The good news is the ongoing effort has succeeded in identifying all the major problem areas; very few contaminated sites have been reported in the last five years.
What`s more, the state has the most aggressive program in the country to ensure leaking petroleum tanks never again become the full-fledged disaster they are today. Florida requires all storage tanks to be replaced with double- walled receptacles to help contain leaks.

All this effort should ensure that drinking water supplies are being protected, Richmond said.
I think the state recognized that they had a potential problem on their hands and addressed it early enough that there has not been any public health consequences, he said.

But, he warned: If this program were to die for any reason, then that story would change overnight.