Environmental Law

Federal Stimulus Money for UST Cleanups in PA

By M. Joel Bolstein

In one of my prior posts, I talked about how much federal stimulus money was being spent in Pennsylvania on brownfield projects.  Yesterday, Governor Rendell announced that Pennsylvania was applying for $6.1 million in federal stimulus dollars to fund 71 leaking UST remediation projects in 40 counties statewide.  In his news release, the Governor noted that the funds would be distributed by US EPA and would be made available at sites where there were no viable responsible parties.  The news release has a list of 71 sites "where Pennsylvania anticipates it will address leaking underground storage tanks using funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act."   It's unclear how the list was put together or whether the money is limited t o those 71 sites or could be used at other eligible sites.  I am aware that other federal dollars, not necessarily stimulus funds, are available for the remediation of petroleum contaminated sites.  For example, the Redevelopment Authority of Bucks County has a revolving loan fund with $500,000 in it for this same type of work.  What we have found is that the requirement that there be no viable responsible party available to pay for the remediation makes it difficult to get some projects approved.  There are some sites that have functioned as Mom and Pop gas stations for decades, but prior to that they may have been owned by one of the large petroleum companies.  You can drive by them and they look abandoned, but legally they may not meet the requirement of no viable responsible party because a review of the chain of title shows some large petroleum company owned the site 50 or 60 years ago.  In those instances, we've been unable to get the certification needed to approve the release of the revolving loan funds.   I've argued that the requirement should not be applied so strictly as to prevent the use of the funds at a site that is abandoned for all intents and purposes.  I'm hoping that the requirement of no viable responsible party will not be an impediment to the use of the federal stimulus funds at these Pennsylvania brownfield sites.  Presumably, EPA and DEP have learned from the experiences with the revolving loan funds and will find a way to ensure that the funds can be spent at a site even if there remains a viable entity somewhere in the chain of title.      

Full post as published by PA Brownfields Environmental Law on July 02, 2009 (boomark / email).