DEP’s Storage Tank Advisory Committee this week unanimously agreed to send a letter to DEP Secretary Kathleen McGinty offering to work with her to find ways of avoiding significant increases in storage tank registration fees. (See 12/10/04 PaED)

DEP is set to go to the April Environmental Quality Board meeting with proposed fee increases that, in some cases, are 100 percent above previous fees.

Committee members said they would like to work with DEP on efforts now underway in Congress to earmark more funds to states from the federal Leaking Underground Storage Tank Fund.

Pennsylvania motorists now pay more than $6.4 million a year into the LUST Fund, but only receive back about $1.8 million or less annually.

In her appearance before the Senate Appropriations Committee this week, Secretary McGinty said she has made obtaining federal tank funds a priority, second only to assuring federal mine reclamation funds continue to come to Pennsylvania.

The Committee also said, and the Secretary confirmed, the number of tanks regulated by DEP has dropped significantly since the Tank Program began in 1989. According to Secretary McGinty, there were 100,000 aboveground and underground tanks in 1989, now there are 44,000 at 14,000 different facilities. The number of people in the program dropped from 140 in the mid-1990s to 111 now.

Secretary McGinty did express a concern that her agency had 4,800 tank spill cases that were still open and said the federal government was pressuring her to reduce that number by half.

The Committee noted DEP has not taken advantage of funding it could request from the Underground Storage Tank Indemnification Fund to help cover cleanup costs it must pay out of DEP’s Storage Tank Fund.

The Committee’s letter concluded, “We have three years to work together on this problem, (before funds are needed) and respectfully request that you delay proposing any storage tank fee increases until we have had the opportunity to work on these options.”

3/11/2005