Federal stimulus money will be used to clean up 10 underground fuel storage tanks in The T&D Region, including one regulators say should get immediate attention.

South Carolina is receiving $3.3 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up 66 leaks in South Carolina, said Adam Myrick, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control. The work will begin as soon as the money is received.

“Five of the sites on the list are considered emergency and one is located in Orangeburg,” Myrick said. “The 66 tanks are listed in classes 1-5. For example, Class 2 tanks are considered a threat to human health or the environment in less than a year.

“Those listed as Class 1 emergency sites are considered to present problems at any time.”

In addition to the class 1 site on John C. Calhoun Drive, the money will also be used to clean five other Orangeburg sites, plus sites in Bamberg, Barnwell and Dorchester counties.

“There are strings attached,” Myrick said. “The determining criteria for this money are that all the identified underground storage tank sites are orphan sites or belong to non-viable responsible parties. That means we can’t locate the owner, that individual is being uncooperative or can’t be found.”

The class 1 property on John C. Calhoun Drive, purchased by Greg Sutcliffe in 2003, was previously home to a gas station that opened in 1951 and closed in 1980.

DHEC “has five monitoring wells on the property, so that’s how they know what’s in the groundwater,” Sutcliffe said. “The tank was removed in 1981. I allowed DHEC to install those wells in 2004 after I had a drill test done in 2003 that showed some contamination.

“I had a private company test the area after I spent about $12,000 removing the contaminated soil. The results were sent to two separate labs that said the soil was clean. I was getting close to a sale on the land but he backed out pending whatever DHEC is going to do. I don’t blame him for not wanting to fool with it.”

Sutcliffe said he did everything he could to handle the situation properly.

Myrick says Sutcliffe will not be responsible for the cleanup costs because while he owns the property now, he didn’t own the tank.

“I don’t know when we were last out there to inspect, but I know we have groundwater contamination there,” Myrick said. “We didn’t know about the site until (Sutcliffe) reported it to us.”

DHEC says there are problems with more tanks than the 66 it has the money to clean up.

“I don’t know how far this goes back, but there are currently 2,973 confirmed releases across the state. That means that the underground storage tank or the associated piping or mechanism has leaked and there is an environmental threat,” Myrick said. “We also discover approximately 100-110 additional confirmed releases annually through our normal inspections.”

T&D Staff Writer Phil Sarata can be reached by e-mail at psarata@times anddemocrat.com or by telephone at 803-533-5540. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.

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