Bill weakening oversight of gas, oil tanks nearest to water intakes doesn't pass

Senate Bill 592 stalled on a second reading in the House of Delegates, where it was a vote away from final passage after the Senate approved it in a 25-7 vote on March 14.

SB 592 had advanced through the Senate and gotten House Energy and Public Works Committee approval despite fervent opposition from community and environmental advocates quick to note regulations the bill would weaken which were adopted through the 2014 Aboveground Storage Tank Act in response to that January’s Elk River chemical leak that contaminated the water supply of 300,000 people.

The chemical that leaked was coal-processing agent 4-methylcychohexanemethanol (MCHM) via a leak from an aboveground storage tank at a Freedom Industries chemical storage and distribution facility in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä.

Rollbacks since 2014

Since the 2014 leak, West Virginia lawmakers have relaxed other aboveground storage tank regulations, dramatically reducing how many tanks are regulated by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The exemptions started a year after the Elk River spill, when the Legislature, in 2015, scaled back the Aboveground Storage Tank Act to only require inspection of tanks that contain either 50,000 gallons or more of hazardous material or are located within a zone of critical concern.

In 2017, the Legislature carved out an exemption for tanks outside zones of critical concern.

DEP Deputy Secretary Scott Mandirola indicated to the Energy and Public Works Committee Monday the number of tanks regulated under the state’s Aboveground Storage Tank Act had declined roughly 90% from more than 42,000 over the course of rollbacks enacted since then.

Gas and oil industry proponents of further rollbacks SB 592 would implement have contended aboveground storage tank act regulations have been onerous and unfairly target oil and gas operators since Freedom Industries was a chemical producer.

But the industry was responsible for nearly all 41 releases from tanks that SB 592 would exempt from January 2022 through January 2025, according to a Gazette-Mail review of DEP data it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Of the 41 releases from tanks to be exempted under SB 592, 10 were from subsidiaries of Diversified Energy Company, the nation’s largest gas and oil well owner, with two more from Columbia Gas Transmission Corp., a subsidiary of TC Energy, a Canada-based energy gas pipeline giant.

Tanks SB 592 would have exempted have a combined capacity of more than 2.75 million gallons of brine, oil, gas, crude oil and other hydrocarbon mixtures, according to a Gazette-Mail review of DEP data.