Hospital Settles Lawsuit Over Faulty Fuel Tank

A South County hospital accused of keeping a faulty underground fuel tank has settled a lawsuit, making it the first such case since Dist. Atty. Anthony J. Rackauckas announced in May that his agency would be cracking down on such storage containers.

Prosecutors filed the lawsuit as a formality last week against Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills, even though the hospital fixed its 20,000-gallon fuel tank in August, Deputy Dist. Atty. Nicholas Thompson said.

The lawsuit was a necessary step to formalize the settlement agreement, which was reached when the hospital corrected the problem and paid $9,000 in fines, Thompson said.

The medical center’s tank provides fuel for its emergency generators, spokeswoman Jennifer D’Andrea said.

“We were late on meeting deadline, but it has been fixed and we are in full compliance now,” she said Wednesday.

A deadline for federal regulations requiring the upgrading and monitoring of underground storage tanks came and passed a year ago, but many businesses in Orange County have yet to comply, officials said. Rackauckas earlier this year announced he would be adding investigators and attorneys to his environmental protection unit to address the problem.

Countywide, close to 3,000 tanks are buried at more than 900 facilities, most of them gas stations.

Thompson said faulty tanks do not present an immediate hazard, but they are an important concern because a large portion of the county’s drinking water comes from underground sources.

“Unfortunately, many [businesses] waited until the last minute to come into compliance and then there weren’t enough contractors to do the work,” he said.

Because most of the violations are not criminal, the district attorney will be filing lawsuits to enforce the code, he said.