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EPA and Central Oil and Supply, Corp. of Monroe, Louisiana, Settle Case

Release Date: 7/10/2002
Contact Information: For more information contact the Office of External Affairs at (214) 665-2200.

Underground Storage Tank Violations Resolved

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Central Oil and Supply Corporation, 2300 Booth Street, Monroe, Louisiana, agreed to settle a case involving 43 alleged violations of the federal and state underground storage tank (UST) regulations for $150,000.

The violations were found during compliance inspections conducted jointly with EPA and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) on June 15, 2000. Nineteen USTs at the following six facilities were inspected:

NO. NAME ADDRESS CITY

1. GasWay HWY 165 Bypass South Monroe

2. Lakeshore Texaco 7901 Desiard Road Monroe

3. Southside Texaco 1607 South 2nd Street Monroe

4. Forrest Park Texaco White Ferry Road West Monroe

5. Gas House 305 Thomas Road West Monroe

6. Short Stop Grocery 149 G.B. Cooley Road West Monroe

The violations involved failure to provide adequate leak detection for the tanks and piping, failure to provide corrosion protection for metal components of the piping, failure to install adequate overfill protection and failure to test the corrosion protection systems adequately. Federal and state UST regulations require specific equipment and methods to be in place on tanks and piping to prevent leaks, spills and overfills from occurring, and if they should occur, they are quickly detected and cleaned up.

"Since it only takes approximately one gallon of gasoline to contaminate approximately five million gallons of drinking water, and more than half of the drinking water in the United States is obtained from groundwater, releases from USTs must be prevented. In Dallas, a leaking tank required an entire area to be evacuated until a cleanup could take place," EPA Regional Administrator Gregg Cooke said.

The Central Oil and Supply settlement is an important part of EPA's ongoing initiative to improve UST compliance by ensuring that owners and operators of underground storage tanks not only install the required corrosion, release detection and spill/overfill prevention equipment, but also continually operate and maintain the equipment in accordance with the regulations.

Other major federal underground storage tank program initiatives include cleaning up USTfields (areas with abandoned tanks), increasing the pace of cleanups, and evaluating the performance of underground storage tank systems and regulations. More information on EPA's underground storage tank program initiatives is available on the Internet at https://www.epa.gov/oust.

A copy of the Consent Agreement and Final Order detailing each violation is available at https://www.epa.gov/region6/news/centoil_consentagree.pdf and https://www.epa.gov/region6/news/centoil_compliorder.pdf