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Richards Fuel Oil Pays $94,000 in Penalties for Storage Tank and Spill Prevention Violations; Will Pay for Necessary Cleanup at Somerville Site

Release Date: 07/23/2001
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(#01082) New York, New York -- Richards Fuel Oil has agreed to comply with underground storage tank and spill prevention regulations at its Somerville, New Jersey facility and will pay a total of $94,000 in penalties for violating the regulations, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The company also agreed to investigate the tank area for the presence of fuel leaks and, if necessary, to clean up any contamination. Last October, EPA had charged Richards Fuel Oil, a retail heating oil dealer located at 110 South Bridge Street in Somerville, with seven counts of violating the Underground Storage Tank (UST) provisions of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the federal law that governs underground storage tank management. In addition, the Agency charged Richards with three counts of violating Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) provisions of the Clean Water Act (CWA), which requires facilities to prepare SPCC plans, implement these plans and update them every three years. "While the storage tanks have now been removed, this facility had the capacity to store nearly 150,000 gallons of fuel oil, so any leak or spill could have had very serious environmental consequences," said William J. Muszynski, Acting EPA Regional Administrator. "The very best way to deal with oil spills or storage tank leaks is to prevent them in the first place or, if they do occur, to contain them and greatly reduce their negative impacts. Under this agreement, EPA will ensure that any leaks that may have occurred in the past are properly cleaned up." EPA inspected the Richards facility on October 21, 1999. During this inspection, EPA identified Clean Water Act and potential RCRA violations. The Agency sent a number of letters to the company requesting information about its four underground storage tank systems, which were used to store kerosene, gasoline and diesel fuel. The company failed to respond to the first letter, and submitted incomplete responses to two others. Based on information in the responses and the inspection, the agency charged Richards Fuel Oil with a number of tank violations including: leaving three unused USTs in the ground for eight months after they were required to be removed; failing to assess the soil around the tanks to make sure that they hadn’t released any product; failing to use a reliable method to regularly test the three tanks for leaks, and failing to keep its liability coverage of the tanks from October 1998 to June 2000 to ensure that it could pay the cleanup expenses if a release of fuel had occurred. The company was also cited for not responding adequately to EPA’s information requests. Underground storage tanks range in capacity from a few hundred to 50,000 or more gallons, and have historically been the nation’s number-one source of groundwater contamination. EPA and states’ underground storage tank regulations were put in place to prevent releases of petroleum, and, if a release does occur, to ensure that it is addressed immediately. EPA had also discovered during an inspection that the facility did not have a proper SPCC plan and was, therefore, violating the federal Clean Water Act. SPCC provisions are designed to prevent oil spills or leaks from reaching waterways of the U.S. and contain these spills or leaks once they occur. Any facility with an above-ground storage tank of more than 660 gallons in a single container, an above-ground storage capacity of more than 1320 gallons total in multiple containers, or a total underground storage capacity of more than 42,000 gallons is required to prepare, implement, and regularly review SPCC plans. The plans ensure that measures are taken to prevent leaks and spills. For example, facilities are required to have secondary containment, usually a cement wall surrounding a storage tank, that will capture any oil released from the tank. In addition, facilities use the SPCC plans to help respond quickly to any leaks that do occur. In this case, Richards did not have an adequate SPCC plan, had not fully implemented an SPCC plan, and had not reviewed the plan every three years to ensure that it is up to date.