Underground FEMA fuel tanks could leak

FEMA disclosed the problems to the EPA in August 2007, a step that could lead to reduced penalties against FEMA. In May, the EPA formally requested information about the status of the tanks.

FEMA said it now oversees 1,129 defunct tanks — including the hundreds that could be leaking — many of which were inherited from the FCC and the Civil Defense Preparedness Agency.

Recently FEMA found the location of most of the defunct tanks by looking through old records. To determine the tanks' conditions requires a physical inspection, and agency contractors have been going to each location and searching with hand-held metal detectors and other tools.

FEMA will determine what to do with the defunct tanks — such as remove them or fill them with sand — on a case-by-case basis, because of varying state laws.

A 2005 law required all federal agencies to submit an inventory to Congress and the EPA of all the tanks they owned or operated, and whether the tanks were in compliance with the law.

The inventory was pushed by private gasoline retailers who long have argued that they were being targeted for violations by a government that wasn't following its own rules.

In the 1960s the federal government gave fuel tanks and generators to radio stations across the country so that vital information could be broadcast during an emergency. The program was managed by the FCC in some parts of the country, and elsewhere by the former Civil Defense Preparedness Agency. Broadcast stations volunteered for the program, and by 1979 about 700 stations participated.

When FEMA was created in 1979 it took over programs run by the civil defense agency. Broadcast stations began to drop out of the program and funding was slowly eliminated between 1987 and 1994.

FEMA manages fewer tanks now because of new broadcast technology and a realignment of oversight responsibilities to states. Now FEMA oversees only 38 in-use underground tanks that are being maintained to comply with EPA rules. These tanks are used for broadcast stations and to fuel generators to keep emergency operations centers running during a disaster.

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