WV Legislature: New Bill Would Gut Oversight Of Chemical, Oil & Gas Storage Tanks, Because Freedom
West Virginia lawmakers introduced a bill Tuesday that would scale back regulations enacted last year on aboveground storage tanks, like the one that spilled last January and contaminated the water of 300,000 of the state’s residents.
House Bill 2754 makes changes to the Aboveground Storage Tank Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin last April and requires storage tank owners to register their tanks so that the state could create an inventory, and also stipulated that these tanks to be inspected by the first of this year.
Under the new bill, the number of tanks regulated by the act would shrink considerably, said Evan Hansen, president of West Virginia think tank Downstream Strategies. The bill exempts storage tanks that store oil or any other liquid associated with the oil or natural gas industry, and it also exempts tanks that hold less than 10,000 gallons.
The Aboveground Storage Tank Act, as it’s written now, applies to the nearly 50,000 registered above-ground storage tanks in West Virginia. With the exemptions outlined in this new bill, fewer than 1,000 would be subject to the act, Hansen said. The drop is severe partly because, according to Downstream Strategies, the oil and gas industry is associated with about three-quarters of the state’s above-ground storage tanks, so exempting the industry from the act greatly reduces the number of tanks that will be subject to the act.
EDIT
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/02/03/3618710/west-virginia-weaker-water-safety-bill/
= new reply since forum marked as read
asking is, where do the people who come up with these stoopid ideas plan on living when our world is toast?
