The Clean Water Act turns 50 next year.
This landmark law has led to some great environmental successes — waterways that were once basically open sewers have been returned to their former scenic beauty, capable of supporting aquatic life and providing drinking water to millions of Americans.
It has also made possible countless water protection careers in public service and private industry, as well as many types of pollution control technologies.
In at least one area, though, public protections related to the Clean Water Act have not advanced at all — despite Congress’ 1972 mandate to the contrary.
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of aboveground storage facilities containing hazardous chemicals — such as arsenic, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene — are not subject to state or federal rules designed to prevent and mitigate spills. These storage tanks sit along our industrialized waterfronts and at agricultural supply depots in our rural communities, threatening the health and safety of nearby residents, many of whom are low-income people of color.
The Clean Water Act requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to issue rules to ensure these tanks are secure, yet Democratic and Republican administrations alike have ignored and even flouted the law.
In the absence of public protections, workers, like the late Jeffrey Davis of Delaware, and entire metropolitan regions, like Charleston, West Virginia, have been subjected to painful death, lasting injury, and catastrophic contamination of drinking water. In response to these unequivocally preventable human and economic disasters, 10 states, including Delaware and West Virginia, have enacted comprehensive rules covering aboveground storage tanks (ASTs) — but 40 states and the EPA have not.
In groundbreaking new research released today, we demonstrate that EPA and state policymakers have significantly underestimated the risks and costs of unregulated ASTs. For the first time anywhere, our analysis also makes clear that AST risks are increasing due to climate change. As our case study of Virginia shows, the threat is especially great in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, which are already overburdened by environmental pollution.
Shockingly High Risks in Virginia
Like in most states, state and federal regulators know little to nothing about ASTs in Virginia — their number, location, chemical contents, condition, or measures in place to prevent leaks, spills, or other incidents. During the Trump administration, the EPA estimated that some 2,000 ASTs in Virginia alone were unregulated but potentially subject to Clean Water Act rules the agency refused to issue.
In our new report — Tanks for Nothing: The Decades-long Failure to Protect the Public from Hazardous Chemical Spills — we show that there may be more than twice as many unregulated ASTs in Virginia than previously thought. Voluntary state spill reporting data show that AST spills have increased over the last 20 years, and at least 1,400 spills came from ASTs.
It’s not just the frequency of spills that is problematic; so too is the threat that unregulated hazardous chemical storage poses to the Commonwealth’s efforts to promote environmental justice and climate resiliency.
Our research shows that most AST spills are occurring in Virginia’s most populous cities and counties and, further, within communities of color and low-income communities. What’s more, AST spills have increased two- to eight-fold when hurricanes have hit Virginia. Sea levels are rising faster in coastal Virginia than anywhere else on the Eastern Seaboard, and federal scientists have determined that hurricanes will continue to grow in strength and frequency in the Commonwealth.
With this new research, we are calling on Virginia policymakers to adopt the recommendations that state environmental, public health, and emergency management agencies first made in 2016: Enact a registration and inventory program for ASTs and, with that information, adopt comprehensive spill prevention and response standards that have been established in Delaware, Florida, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other states.
EPA Regulations Are Required Now
EPA is decades past its deadline to issue rules for aboveground storage of hazardous substances. The best time to enact rigorous spill prevention and response rules for these tanks is today — not after the next worker’s death or grievous injury, nor after a chemical release contaminating the drinking water of thousands of Americans.
We’re calling on the EPA to finally issue the AST spill prevention and response rules Congress mandated a half century ago, and to do so in accordance with the Biden administration’s priorities for regulatory reform, environmental justice, racial equity, and climate action.
Join Our January Webinar
Join us Thursday, January 13, 2022, at 4 p.m. Eastern (1 p.m. Pacific) for a webinar about how unregulated toxic and hazardous chemical storage tanks threaten communities across the country.
Jared Knicley, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, will discuss how NRDC and its partners are working to establish federal rules to protect communities and waterways from spills and leaks of hazardous substances.
Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar Noah Sachs, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, will discuss how states should take action to prevent chemical spills by enacting comprehensive storage tank regulations.
And Center for Progressive Reform Policy Analyst Darya Minovi will present her research from the Tanks for Nothing report and describe how EPA has underestimated the extent and environmental health threats from unregulated chemical storage nationally and in Virginia.
The webinar is free and open to all, but advance registration is required.
UPDATE: A recording of the webinar is now available.
Showing 2,825 results
Darya Minovi, David Flores | December 8, 2021
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of aboveground storage facilities containing hazardous chemicals — such as arsenic, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene — are not subject to state or federal rules designed to prevent and mitigate spills. These storage tanks sit along our industrialized waterfronts and at agricultural supply depots in our rural communities, threatening the health and safety of nearby residents, many of whom are low-income people of color. It's beyond time for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and states like Virginia to take action.
James Goodwin, Minor Sinclair | December 2, 2021
Over the last four decades, small government ideologues have waged a coordinated attack against government. The strategy has paid off: Public approval ratings of all three branches of government are at all-time lows. Nevertheless, the federal government still manages to get things done on a day-to-day basis, and that is primarily due to the so-called 4th branch of government — the administrative and regulatory state that employs 2 million workers, invests trillions of dollars each year on things like air pollution monitoring and cutting-edge clean energy research, and makes rules that protect us all.
Katlyn Schmitt | December 1, 2021
Carbon capture use and storage is at the center of the national climate policy debate, promoted by the oil and gas industry, the private sector, and even some environmental organizations as a solution to the climate crisis. The federal infrastructure package that President Biden recently signed into law appropriates more than $10.3 billion for the nationwide buildout of carbon capture infrastructure. The fossil fuel industry is targeting Louisiana as an emerging hub for carbon capture, mainly because of the large concentration of industrial facilities that emit carbon dioxide in the stretch of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. While Louisiana must move quickly and aggressively in pursuit of climate change solutions, deploying carbon capture to reach net-zero emissions is not the answer. A new Center for Progressive Reform policy brief has more on the subject.
Robin Kundis Craig | November 23, 2021
Less than two months after oral argument, in its first interstate groundwater case, the Supreme Court unanimously decided that Mississippi must rely on a doctrine known as equitable apportionment if it wants to sue Tennessee over the shared Middle Claiborne Aquifer. In an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court squarely rejected Mississippi's claim that Tennessee is stealing Mississippi's groundwater, noting that it had "'consistently denied' the proposition that a State may exercise exclusive ownership or control of interstate waters." As expected, the court's opinion in Mississippi v. Tennessee is short -- 12 pages, half of which recount the long history of the case. Nevertheless, in this first opinion about states' rights to interstate aquifers, the court made three important decisions that are likely to guide future interstate disputes over natural resources.
Robin Kundis Craig | November 23, 2021
Confirming expectations, the Supreme Court on Monday unanimously denied Mississippi’s claim that Tennessee is stealing its groundwater. If Mississippi wants to pursue its groundwater battle with Tennessee, it will have to file a new complaint with the court asking for an equitable apportionment of the Middle Claiborne Aquifer, which lies beneath Mississippi, Tennessee, and other states.
Karen Sokol | November 22, 2021
During a historic hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform on October 28, the executives of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and the American Petroleum Institute (API), refused to admit to their decades-long climate disinformation campaign that is now well-documented in publicly available documents uncovered by journalists and researchers. If that weren’t enough, the executives continued to deny climate science under oath, albeit with a slight twist from their previous disinformation campaign. Instead of denying the science establishing that fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis, they’re now denying the science establishing the urgent need for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. In other words, they’re still lying -- a strategy that was on full display in this blockbuster hearing.
Catalina Gonzalez, Maggie Dewane | November 18, 2021
Despite President Biden’s bold climate commitments at home and COP26, his administration and Congress have much more work to address climate change and to make climate justice a reality.
Emily Ranson, Marcha Chaudry | November 16, 2021
Although vaccination rates continue to rise and coverage on COVID-19 is fading away from prominent news dashboards, our rates are still higher than in summer 2020. While we still adapt to living and working with COVID-19, we must prepare for future public health emergencies so we do not lose another year figuring out our response.
Daniel Farber | November 15, 2021
Our system of environmental regulation divides up regulation of a single substance based on each of its environmental impacts. Thus, the regulatory system sees the "trees," not the "forest." That muddies the waters when we are talking about regulatory priorities, strategies, and long-term goals. It can also lead to framing issues in ways that may weaken environmentalist arguments, since the various harms of a substance or activity get fragmented into different silos. Fossil fuels are a case in point.