Paper Number: 2014-05

Document Date: 11/2014

Author(s): Robin R. Jenkins, Dennis Guignet and Patrick J. Walsh

Subject Area(s): Motor Fuels

Keywords: human health benefit; ecological benefit; aesthetic improvement; recreational improvement; increased land productivity

Abstract: The United States has a vast infrastructure of retail gasoline stations that has evolved to support our heavy reliance on automobiles. The first motorists at the turn of the century transferred gasoline from large above ground storage tanks into smaller dispensers and then poured gasoline by hand – an overtly dangerous and risky process. In 1905, the gas pump was invented and improved the process significantly, allowing gasoline to be stored underground. As the years passed, gas stations and underground storage tanks (USTs) were scattered virtually everywhere throughout the United States (Randl 2008). At the same time, an increasing number of underground tanks stored petroleum products and hazardous substances at locations other than gas stations, including airports and federal military facilities. Until the mid-1980’s, many USTs were constructed of bare unprotected steel which can corrode over time (US EPA 2014d). While risks were lower than managing fuels without pumps, new more obscure risks emerged - eventually, many USTs would leak.

Despite the localized nature of UST releases, the potential magnitude of the damages began to draw national attention in the early 1980s. In December 1983 for example, a popular TV news program, 60 Minutes, aired a story about drinking water that had been contaminated by gasoline released from USTs in a Rhode Island neighborhood (US EPA 2009). A growing national concern led Congress to add Subtitle I to RCRA in 1984 to specifically address leaking USTs. The EPA Office of Underground Storage Tanks (OUST) was created in 1985 to implement a new federal program to prevent, detect, and clean up releases from USTs. EPA also set up requirements to assure that tank owners were financially responsible for any leaks that might occur (US EPA 2002a).

A wide variety of social benefits are associated with the regulatory program, running the gamut from health and ecosystem improvements to better aesthetics and increased land productivity. Not all of the benefit categories are applicable to all UST sites; indeed, the nature and magnitude of relevant benefits can vary significantly and should be considered case-by-case.

In the next sections we briefly describe the regulatory program and the population of regulated systems and facilities. We provide a detailed qualitative description of the social benefits possible from prevention and remediation of UST releases, and from reuse of formerly contaminated (or potentially contaminated) UST sites. While this list of potential types of social benefits is meant to be comprehensive, it is important to emphasize that the existence and magnitude of different benefit categories vary by site. In addition to this comprehensive qualitative discussion, four brief case studies of UST release sites are presented to illustrate the diversity of contamination events and associated social benefits.

This paper is part of the Environmental Economics Working Paper Series.

• Prevention, Cleanup, and Reuse Benefits From the Federal UST Program (PDF)(35 pp, 567 K, 11/2014)