Monongahela Outrage

Last Saturday a diesel-oil storage tank in western Pennsylvania collapsed, allowing an estimated 1 million gallons of fuel to gush over a surrounding earthen dike and flow into the nearby Monongahela River. By today the oil spill was expected to reach Wheeling, W.Va., 60 miles downstream from its origin. Along its route hundreds of thousands of people who draw their water from the Monongahela have been left looking bleakly at the prospect of days and perhaps weeks of dry taps and increasing discomfort. Businesses have been forced to shut down. Schools have closed. Daily, lines form to draw drinking and cooking water from supplies trucked in by the National Guard.

Is the pollution of the Monongahela and the enormous inconvenience and considerable economic loss that it has caused due to an act of God? Hardly. Is it the result of an unavoidable accident, one of those risks that we accept as part of the price of living in a technologically based society? No. The Monongahela oil spill instead appears to be due solely to one oil-refining company’s curious and even cavalier disregard of legally required safety procedures, to say nothing of plain common sense. From all indications, the collapse of the Ashland Oil Co.’s tank resulted from an attempt to carry out an inherently dangerous activity without first meeting routine standards of safety.

John Hall, the chairman of Ashland Oil, acknowledges that his company’s officials failed to obtain the necessary local permits to erect the 4-million-gallon oil storage tank near Pittsburgh. He acknowledges that the 40-year-old steel tank, which was recently moved to the Pennsylvania site from Cleveland, had not been tested for leaks or durability in the accepted way--by filling it with water. Instead, only five feet of water were pumped into the 48-foot-high tank before the decision was made that it was safe. When the tank collapsed on Saturday it was being filled for the first time, with more than 3 million gallons of diesel fuel.

“In hindsight,” Hall said, “one might question the use of 40-year-old steel. We might have been more persistent in getting our permits. I would have preferred to use water-testing methods” (to check the tank’s integrity). The safety procedures that Hall suggests should have been followed are, of course, precisely those required and intended to obviate the kind of regretful hindsight that he now demonstrates. Hall says that he’s sorry for what happened. Still to be explained is what on Earth the Ashland officials could have been thinking of when they so recklessly courted danger.