Some states are slow to put together federally approved programs to clean up underground storage tanks leaking fuel and other contaminants into the surrounding soil and water. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Some states are slow to put together federally approved programs to clean up underground
storage tanks leaking fuel and other contaminants into the surrounding soil and water. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
There are two confirmed releases for every three underground storage tanks at service stations
and other places. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a program to identify and clean up those leaky tanks. According to information garnered from the EPA’s website, most states
comply. But of the 17 states that don’t, six are Great Lakes states. In the region, only Minnesota
and Pennsylvania have approved Underground Storage Tank programs.
The remaining states, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York, have their
own programs with sometimes different standards. There’s a backlog of 36,500 leaky
underground storage tanks to be cleaned up in the Great Lakes states. That’s 28 percent of the
nation’s total backlog. By far… Michigan and Illinois have the most sites, each having a backlog
of nearly 9,000 underground storage tanks to be cleaned up.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
