Max Ortiz / The Detroit News PM Environmental vice-president Mike Kulka tests soil for hazardous material prior to the removal of a buried fuel storage tank.

Part 3 -- Costs hamper cleanup

    But other tank owners balked at spending the $30,000 to $50,000 required for even simple removals. Thorough clean-up of leaking tanks and sites with surrounding polluted soil can cost considerably more. Assessments of chemical pollution at those sites often mean additional expenses of $15,000 to $200,000.

    Aware that high costs would slow tank removals, Michigan lawmakers levied a gas tax and created a fund to subsidize outdated tanks that existed at the time. The Michigan Underground Storage Tank Financial Assurance Act was designed to pay most clean-up fees, less a $10,000 deductible for each individual tank.

Jason Thompson, left, and John Laidlaw of Myers Construction use dry ice to help remove remaining gases and vapors before a storage tank in Southfield is removed.

    Gas taxes of seven-eighths of a cent per gallon couldn’t keep up with demand, however, and the fund went bankrupt in 1995, after only seven years of subsidies.

    Today, state funds no longer exist to bankroll tank removals and pollution remediation. The Legislature has not acted to replenish the financial aid. Owners are now fully responsible for all costs.

    “The fund was never a lot. It was underfunded from the get-go,” said Jeanne Schlaufman, a DEQ environmental analyst.

    Federal dollars to run Michigan’s underground tank enforcement have fared somewhat better. The EPA grants Michigan $1.75 million each year, also raised from gas taxes, specifically to address the state’s leaking tanks, although state officials say more funding would obviously speed removals.

    “You can never get enough money or enough staff to do what you want in a timely fashion,” said Elizabeth Browne, operations chief of the DEQ’s Storage Tank Division.

    Despite the vagaries of funding, legal confusion over tank ownership and the welter of state and federal officials involved, Michigan has managed to clean up 9,800 leaking tanks during the past decade.

    That total represents roughly half of known leaks across the state. All but 17 tanks were used to store gas or fuel oil. The rest hold industrial solvents and chemicals also deemed hazardous to human health.

Lower priority

    Advances aside, many public officials remain surprised that underground tanks endure to pose any environmental perils. Around Metro Detroit, the issue is rarely mentioned and municipalities have instead concentrated on separating their sewer systems in expensive efforts to clean rivers, drains, lakes and other surface waters.

    “Underground tanks are news to me,” said Barb Dempsey, mayor pro tem of Mt. Clemens, even though Macomb County’s case against Stramaglia is at the forefront of the state’s new crackdown on violators. She promised the pollution problem would be investigated by her city, which recently completed a $35 million project to separate storm and sanitary sewers to protect Lake St. Clair from contamination. “We don’t want all the work we’ve done for cleaner water undermined by this,” she said.

You can reach Jeremy Pearce at (313) 223-4825 or jpearce@detnews.com.