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Fuel Leaks Left To Nature?
A California-wide controversy has erupted over the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Recommendations to Improve the Cleanup Process for California's Leaking Underground Fuel Tanks (LUFTs). If the State Board implements the report's recommendations, as a preliminary memo indicates it will, then thousands of fuel-contaminated sites will be left to the rejuvenating forces of nature.
According to the S.F. Regional Board's Kevin Graves, petroleum is a natural substance that degrades over time as petroleum-loving microorganisms eat away at it. This process, called bioremediation, is often as effective, and far less costly, than human-engineered processes. "Junk food for bugs" is what another Board scientist calls the lighter, more toxic components of petroleum.
The Lawrence Livermore report says the microorganisms tend to "stabilize" contaminant plumes within 250 feet of the source, leading the report authors to conclude that "fuel hydrocarbons (FHCs) have limited impacts on human health, the environment, or California's groundwater resources...The costs of cleaning up FHCs are often inappropriate when compared to the magnitude of the impact on groundwater resources." According to the Laboratory's calculations, in fact, California's cleanup expenditures place a value of $637,000 per acre-foot on contaminated groundwater. "In comparison," the report says, "the current cost of developing a new water supply in California is estimated to be $700 to $900 per acre-foot."
The State Board commissioned the Livermore report to help update its LUFT policy. This update is also required by California Senate Bill 1764, legislation passed in 1994 that legally mandates the Board to develop underground storage tank (UST) cleanup regulations by March 1997. The State Board will use the report, as well as the recommendations of the SB1764 oversight committee, to make its final policy decision. In the meantime, however, the State Board's Walt Pettit issued a December memo to all his Regional Boards calling for an interim change in policy. On all low-risk groundwater sites, defined as sites with shallow groundwater and at least 250 feet from drinking water wells, staff were instructed to consider replacing active remediation with monitoring, in effect leaving the remaining contaminants to the bugs. Dave Deaner of the state's UST Cleanup Fund says, "The State Board is not saying to close these cases on a whim - it's saying, ‘Let's take another look at these cases to reassess risks.'"
While the business community is cheering the state's interim policy change, environmentalists argue that it is rash and unnecessary. The Sierra Club's Bonnie Holmes explains that some regional boards, including San Francisco's, have been closing low-risk sites for years. "There is already flexibility in the law," she says. "We fear that a change in policy will encourage local agencies to leave contaminated sites behind all over the state."
Holmes and other critics argue that the new interim policy fails to account for the full spectrum of factors that determine how long a petroleum plume will take to naturally degrade - factors such as the composition of the petroleum at the site and the site's geology. They say there are some sites where biodegradation may not be happening at a significant enough rate to restore the aquifer to a beneficial use and others that may have reached a threshold where degradation is no longer occurring due to lack of organisms or nutrients.
Other criticisms center on the research informing the policy change. "If you review the Livermore report carefully, you'll find that it was done so quickly, and perhaps with the conclusions already in mind, that it turns the scientific method on its head," says Clearwater Group geologist Markus Niebanck.
But the S.F. Regional Board's Loretta Barsamian thinks the Livermore report's conclusions are sound. "They're certainly in line with our case experience," she says, pointing out that her Regional Board was the first to create a separate, more flexible set of closure criteria for fuel sites in its 1994 Basin Plan amendments. She says the report's recommendations are being wrongly interpreted as a new approach, whereas in many cases they confirm present practice. "We think Walt Pettit got it right in urging that regulators be aware of the Livermore findings in making case closure decisions," she says.
What California's final fuel sites cleanup policy will be is now before the State Board. The SB1764 committee recommendations, due to the Board by the end of February, will have a significant impact on the policy process. After they are reviewed, the State Board plans to conduct public hearings and then, finally, decide on a course of action. Whatever the criticisms from various quarters, everyone seems to agree on one thing. As Niebanck puts it, "Change in California's underground storage tank policy is long overdue."
Contact: Dave Deaner (916) 227-4360, Kevin Graves (510)286-0435 or Bonnie Holmes (916)557-1106
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