Tag: Above Ground Storage Tanks

Groups Working with Governor, DEP to Avoid Special Session on Tank Bill

Stakeholders met with the governor’s office and the Department of Environmental Protection Friday to discuss possibly calling the legislature into a special session. The session would be focused on fixing some unintended consequences both Senate and House leadership see in the above ground storage tank bill passed earlier this year.

Friday’s meeting was the second this week focused on Senate Bill 373, legislation that came as a response to January’s chemical spill in Charleston. The spill contaminated 300,000 people’s drinking water for as many as ten days.

Representatives of business, industry and citizen groups met with DEP Secretary Randy Huffman and members of Governor Tomblin’s staff to discuss their concerns over moving the deadline to comply with tank inspections required by the bill.

House Speaker Tim Miley and Senate President Jeff Kessler have asked the governor to call a special session for lawmakers to reconsider the January 1 deadline.

Co-founder of the West Virginia Sustainable Business Council Nancy Ward says pushing back the deadline won’t help her business regain the customer trust it lost during the water crisis.

“Weakening the bill or pushing back deadlines [won’t help],” Ward said.

Jeni Burns, Ward’s Sustainable Business Council co-founder, said at Friday’s meeting, Huffman presented his department’s proposal for rules to regulate above ground tanks.

The system includes three levels of classification with regulations for each, but representatives of the DEP didn’t respond to requests for a more detailed explanation.

The group is working to avoid a special session by fixing the unintended consequences of the legislation and addressing the concerns of interested parties through rulemaking.

“If we go into special session, we kind of leave it up in the air for whatever to happen,” Burns said, “but if we can sit down around the table and look at the best interest of everybody they represent and try to come to a solution, I think that’s better in the long run for West Virginians.”

Tomblin will ultimately decide if a special session is necessary. Members of his staff say he will likely make that decision in the next few weeks.

Freedom Industries Plans Tank Demolition for Monday

  After running into asbestos problems, the company at the center of a January spill into West Virginia’s biggest water supply plans to start dismantling its tanks Monday.

Freedom Industries Chief Restructuring Officer Mark Welch described the new start time Tuesday in bankruptcy court in Charleston.

The company has delayed the teardown multiple times. Freedom stalled its start last weekend because of asbestos issues in tank gaskets and elsewhere.

Freedom is under state orders to demolish its Charleston site, where a leaky tank contaminated the water source downstream. For days, 300,000 residents couldn’t use tap water for most purposes.

Welch says the site should be cleared out in three or four weeks, but the company is proceeding slowly and carefully.

Freedom then must remediate the chemical damage done to the site.

West Virginia Storage Tank Website Up and Running

Members of the public now have full access to comments collected by the state Department of Environmental Protection on a newly passed law. That law…

Members of the public now have full access to comments collected by the state Department of Environmental Protection on a newly passed law. That law requires the DEP to create a regulatory program for above ground storage tanks in order to protect the state’s water.

The Above Ground Storage Tank section of the state DEP’s website isn’t fully complete. Some pages are still under construction, but for now, members of the public have access to the language of Senate Bill 373, a bill written in response to the January 9 chemical spill in Charleston that contaminated the drinking water for 300,000 West Virginians.

The site also contains links to organizations that create standards for tanks, definitions of terms and contacts at the DEP who deal with tank policy.

What you can’t find, however, are specific regulations for above ground storage tanks in West Virginia because they just don’t exist yet.

Scott Mandirola, director of the DEP’s Division of Water and Waste Management, told a legislative committee last week they’re in the process of writing those regulations which must be approved by the legislature during the 2015 session.

But before they complete the new rules, the DEP is reaching out to stakeholders and members of the public for their input on what they think should be included. Those comments are fully accessible on the DEP’s site, which is a result of many of the public comments themselves.

The site contains comments from more than 60 individuals, 20 organizations and 16 businesses.

Many of the public remarks and some from organizations were very similar in nature and even format. The West Virginia Rivers Coalition provided a template for multiple grassroots like Friends of Water and the West Virginia Citizen Action Group who then passed them on to members.

Those comments asked for transparency in the process, the closing of regulatory loopholes and adequate fees to cover the administrative costs of creating a regulatory program.

Some comments from business and industry representatives asked the DEP to consider regulatory programs they are already subject to when writing new rules to avoid a duplicative process that could harm businesses.

For example, the West Virginia Coal Association called any further rules to regulate tanks at mine sites unnecessary and said additional regulations would only confuse and frustrate the agency’s ability to carry out its current inspection process.

The Independent Oil and Gas Association commented increased compliance costs associated with regulations, like fees for signs on tanks, could outweigh the profits at some drilling sites and cause a loss in production.

Senate Bill 373 requires the tank registration process to begin on June 6, which Mandirola said they will be ready for, but he anticipated the electronic registration site to go live on June 10, allowing them to deal with technical issues at the beginning of the week.

The DEP is asking tank owners who are not already registered in its Electronic Permitting or Electronic Submission System to go ahead and create a username on their site to streamline the process.

The DEP also has an online quiz available to see if you tank falls under the guidelines of Senate Bill 373.
 

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