Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 18, 1995                   TAG: 9505180021
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEEDED: OIL TANKS - AND CONTROLS

Ugly? Yes. And periodically over the years, the 35 above-ground storage tanks for various petroleum products, and the interstate pipeline that feeds them, have spilled and leaked at least 145,570 gallons into the ground and creek. Most of it was recovered, the oil companies say. Still, ground water has been contaminated, and no one knows how badly.

That is one way to regard the tank farm along U.S. 460, subject of a recent series in the news columns of this paper. Another way to regard it is to acknowledge that the tanks in Montvale, and another 33 in Roanoke, provide needed gasoline, diesel fuel and heating oil to Western Virginia via the pipeline from Texas. Many folks who look over the four-story-high white cylinders at Montvale and cluck-cluck about defacing nature, we'd wager, do so from the seats of comfortably air-conditioned automobiles, humming along on gasoline that was trucked from storage tank to neighborhood gas-pump.

As long as Americans rely heavily on oil in this auto-driven culture, Montvale's tank farm will be an unattractive necessity. But accepting an aesthetic trade-off is a far cry from accepting environmental degradation or threats to public health and safety.

Bedford County should take more seriously its need to be prepared if something goes terribly wrong at this huge facility.

After 32 years without tragedy, no one expects this to happen. But it is the nature of accidents to come unexpectedly. Should a disaster occur, the Montvale Volunteer Fire Department just a block away would be the first crew on the scene. More than only one member of the department needs to be trained to deal with hazardous-materials spills or fires; an untrained crew could well do more harm than good.

More likely than a conflagration, experts agree, is a spill or leak that would harm the environment and present a health hazard to residents. To ensure this does not happen, the state bears a critical responsibility.

Virginia's Department of Environmental Quality developed tough regulations for early detection of above-ground storage-tank leaks after a 200,000-gallon leak was discovered at a Northern Virginia tank farm in 1990. Star Enterprise, a Texaco affiliate that also has tanks at Montvale, had to pay millions in damages and fines.

The resulting regulations became a model for other states. These, however, are under review by the Allen administration as it searches for ways to cut regulatory costs for industries in Virginia. Already, the DEQ has abandoned cleanup requirements for "small leaks determined to pose no risk to public health or the environment."

Fine - provided those scientists who say that small amounts will break down naturally in soil prove to be correct. But "saving" industries time and money by easing off on pollution-prevention measures could prove costlier in the end.

Relying on industry to police itself would be naive at best, and show a callous disregard for the risk to the public at worst. Polluters who get caught have a heavy price to pay. But they have to get caught. Independent tests ordered by then-Gov. Douglas Wilder in 1991 found 12 leaks on Star property in Fairfax County, while company tests the year before had found none.

Slick, huh? Too slick.