Owners of USTs are presently required to have pollution insurance of $1 million (including risk retention group coverage) or surety bond. guaranty, indemnity contractor letter of credit...or proven assets of ten times that amount.
How many individual service station owners have proven assets of $10,000,000?
The EPA has strict requirements for each of these methods. In addition there may be state required methods. In spite of a state having a pollution fund that will pay for clean-up costs of a leak, UST owners need to show financial responsibility...and be able to pay for costs to cover property damage, personal injury and contamination of water. These regulations must be met all throughout the Service Station industry from the country's largest oil companies to the single independent vendor on your own home town corner. Pollution insurance does not pay for the repairs necessary to prevent further leakage.
UST owners are required to keep records of the type of coverage they have for their underground tanks. These records need to be filed with the EPA when a new tank is installed or the UST owner receives notice that their coverage is being either cancelled, is no longer sufficient or that they cannot get replacement coverage.
Under existing regulations UST owners are required to keep daily records on each of their tanks which includes among other items the water in the tanks, product received, closing running gallons, recording meter output, etc., etc.
If these records are not kept on a daily basis then fines of $2,500 a day can be levied. If records are kept so sloppily that they hide a leak, a $10,000 fine can be imposed; and if records were intentionally sloppy to hide a leak, the fine could be $25,000. Obviously fines of this magnitude could put many service station owners out of business.
The CAPSCAN device offers a system of inventory control, tank monitoring and record keeping that will help service station owners avoid problems economically.
Regards, Jeff |
