An amendment to the tank deregulation bill (SB 423) — an amendment that might have made the bill more palatable to environmental groups — failed on a 13 to 12 vote last night in the West Virginia House Judiciary Committee.
Evan Hansen
The amendment, introduced by House Minority Chair Tim Manchin (D-Marion), would have required the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to impose additional requirements on opt-out tanks — conditions as protective as current law.
The amendment would have opened the door to environmental groups to say yes to the bill.
As it stands, the bill is headed for passage with the support of the DEP and the oil and gas industry. But environmentalists remain opposed. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin is expected to sign it.
All nine Democrats on the committee voted for the amendment. They were joined by three Republican delegates John McCuskey (R-Kanawha), Frank Deem (R-Wood) and Patrick Lane (R-Kanawha).
Brad White (R-Kanawha), considered by environmentalists as the swing vote on the committee, voted no and sent the amendment to defeat.
SB 423 passed the House Judiciary Committee by a similar 13-12 vote — although on the bill, Deem voted yes and White voted no.
SB 423 started out as an oil, coal and gas industry bill, exempted almost all the 50,000 tanks regulated by the above ground tank law passed last year in the wake of the Freedom Industries spill.
Sponsors of the original SB 423 rollback bill included Charles Trump (R-Morgan) and Craig Blair (R-Berkeley).
At a stakeholders meeting on February 11, 2015 at the state capitol building, environmental groups proposed an alternative relief measure — one that would have cut the number of regulated tanks in half — from about 50,000 tanks to about 25,000 tanks.
Evan Hansen, a science adviser to the West Rivers Coalition, was at that meeting.
“There are reasonable compromises available that would cut down on number of tanks regulated while preserving the integrity of current law,” Hansen said.
“At that meeting, we put forward such a proposal that would have cut the number of regulated tanks in half,” Hansen said. “It would keep regulation for all Level One tanks. Those are tanks in a zone of critical concern. A zone of critical concern is an area next to a river within a five hour travel time of a drinking water intake. It would keep regulation of tanks that are 50,000 gallons or larger. And it we would have kept regulation of tanks that store a hazardous chemical. And it would keep regulation for every tank within 1,000 feet of a stream.”
That proposal would have cut the number of regulated tanks from 50,000 to 25,000.
There were about seven people from the oil and gas industry at that meeting, Hansen said.
“They said no to our proposal,” Hansen said. “They wanted a blanket exemption for all oil, gas and coal industry tanks. That was the original SB 423.”
As for the current SB 423, Hansen says it’s “a significant rollback of the current law and it should be defeated.”
But it won’t be. It will allow almost all of the regulated above ground tanks to opt out of DEP regulation. DEP could impose more stringent conditions on those tanks that opt-out, but those conditions could be challenged in court.