L.A. Has Yet to Replace 120 Aging Fuel Tanks

At a cost of at least $50,000, vehicles at 40 police, sanitation and other city facilities will be fueled from trucks instead of underground tanks next week because of a federal anti-pollution deadline set 10 years ago.

The emergency program was ordered by the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday because the city failed to replace older, leak-prone tanks with new, double-lined vessels by a federal Environmental Protection Agency deadline of Dec. 22. Using the older tanks would trigger fines of $11,000 to $20,000 per day. The council approved spending $3.9 million on a no-bid basis to speed up the work.

City Council members voiced anger and frustration at what they called mismanagement of a vital program.

“We have known about this deadline and mandate for 10 years,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick. “There is no excuse whatsoever that here we are at the 13th hour, finding out, ‘Gee, we didn’t think of this.’ ”

Also affected are fuel tank systems for emergency generators for the LAPD’s 911 system.

Fuel tanks will be temporarily closed Tuesday at the West Valley, Devonshire, Harbor and Southwest police stations and Sanitation Bureau yards in the San Fernando Valley and north-central Los Angeles, according to Les Iden, assistant general manager of the city’s Fleet Services Division.

Until the more than 120 fuel and oil tanks at the sites can be replaced--a process that takes about five weeks at each site--tanker trucks probably will provide diesel fuel for trash trucks and emergency generators. Many police officers are being given credit cards to fuel up their patrol cars at private service stations, Iden said. In addition to credit cards and fuel trucks, some city vehicles will be assigned to other city facilities to gas up, officials said.

“We feel confident we will have a solution in place by Dec. 23,” Iden said.

The EPA decided a decade ago that aging public and private fuel tanks should be replaced within 10 years by double-lined vessels to eliminate leaking and ground water contamination.

Federal officials recently estimated that only slightly more than half of the private service station operators have brought their tanks into compliance. The cost of replacing the tanks, testing the soil and installing leak detectors can run to $200,000 or more per gas station.

The city has spent $30 million to replace tanks or consolidate facilities so that some old tanks can be abandoned. To date, 92 sites have been brought into compliance, but 40 others, most with multiple tanks, have not.

“The diesel tank and fueling system for the emergency generator for LAPD 911 does not meet December 1998 requirements,” Randall Bacon, head of General Services, said in a report to the council. “If this system is not upgraded, critical public safety response during a power outage will be negatively impacted.”

Iden downplayed the threat, saying that the fuel tanks currently are full and can be used in an emergency, but that any refills will have to be done with mobile tankers until a new piping system is installed.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said the council loaded the responsible departments with other projects so the fuel tank program was not a high enough priority. But he acknowledged the problem.

LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks opposed closure of tanks at police stations when he took office last year, forcing officials to put the sites back into the replacement program last month.

Parks was concerned that police response times and operations could be jeopardized if officers have to drive to other city facilities to fuel patrol cars.