Dirty, Expensive Project On Tap For School District

The school district is looking at an estimated quarter-million-dollar cost to remove about a dozen underground oil storage tanks.

That was the word Tuesday night at a school board meeting after board member Ralph Douglass provided a report from the facilities committee. While Douglass did not reveal the financial estimate, business manager Jack Myers said after the meeting that it stands at about $250,000.

But such estimates are hazy, Myers said, because you never know how much remediation may be needed until tanks are unearthed and it is determined how much, if any, oil has seeped into the ground.

Myers said the district has not been ordered to remove the tanks. It is simply reacting to the fact that the tanks are old and the federal government recommends that underground tanks be replaced by those above ground.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are about 595,000 underground storage tanks in the United States. Their biggest threat, EPA explains, is the contamination of groundwater.

“We've got 12 to 15 tanks,” Myer said. The priorities for removal, he added, are two large tanks at the , one of which is used.

Some of the oil in the tanks, Myers and Douglass said, will be sold for about $12,000.