Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Environmental Policy topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Senate Finance and Claims approves using tank-cleanup fund for preventive petroleum-tank work
Summary
The committee voted to give Senate Bill 315 a do-pass recommendation, allowing the petroleum tank cleanup fund to pay for preventive measures such as sump replacement; the fiscal note estimates about $874,000 a year for the program and the bill sets a $2,000 per-facility reimbursement cap in its initial design.
Senate Bill 315, which would let the Petroleum Tank Release Compensation Board use money from the petroleum tank cleanup fund to pay for preventive work at fuel-storage facilities, received a do-pass recommendation from the Senate Finance and Claims committee.
Sponsor Senator Asper opened the hearing saying the bill would add prevention as an authorized use of the cleanup fund and noted roughly $8,000,000 flows into the fund annually while the fiscal note estimates prevention uses would cost about $874,000 per year. Industry and agency witnesses told the committee they support the change.
Brad Longcake, representing the Montana Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, said stakeholders—including DEQ and fund administrators—worked over the interim to agree on bill language and asked the committee to move the bill forward, saying, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of gain.” Amy Steinmetz, DEQ’s Waste Management and Remediation Division administrator, told the committee that “preventing releases is much cheaper and more effective at protecting the environment than cleaning up petroleum releases.”
Terry Wadsworth, executive director of the Petroleum Tank Release Compensation Board, explained how the prevention program would work in practice: facilities typically undergo inspections on roughly a three-year cycle (the bill references about 1,000 days between inspections), and the proposal limits reimbursements so the program is spread over multiple years rather than concentrated in the first year. The working group that drafted the proposal settled on a $2,000 maximum reimbursement per facility because many small operators spend about that amount on inspections, and the sponsors expected an annual prevention-program impact the board estimated could be absorbed by the fund (witnesses referenced an approximately $800,000–$874,000 annual effect in different exchanges).
Committee members raised questions about eligibility, what preventive remedies would cover and whether the maximum $2,000 is sufficient for underground work. Wadsworth said prevention dollars would typically cover modest but preventive fixes—replacing cracked sumps or outdated piping and similar targeted repairs—rather than large-scale subsurface excavation in the program’s initial phase.
Senators also asked about the funding source. Sponsor Asper said the state special revenue account is funded by fees paid by producers and license-holders; those fees flow into the cleanup fund and finance both historical cleanup and, with this bill, a new limited prevention program.
After discussion, the sponsor moved that the committee report SB 315 with a do-pass recommendation. The chair called the question and, with proxies assumed to be yes, the committee recorded that Senate Bill 315 passed out of Finance and Claims.
The committee’s action leaves the prevention proposal available for amendment later; backers said they view the $2,000 cap and the limited annual cost as a pilot that could be reassessed after several years if the prevention approach reduces future cleanup demand.
