WARNING! If You Have an Underground Storage Tank, You Need to Read This...

We get a lot of calls from property owners fretting over what to do about their abandoned underground storage tanks. You see, the EPA stipulates that they must do something about it, and offers two options: fill the tank with an inert, chemically inactive solid, or have the tank removed. To a property owner unfamiliar all the rules and regulations and methods of abandonment, either option can sound expensive and time consuming and, well, difficult.  That's because they are. So before we reveal our proven—and until now, secret—solution, let’s take a brief look at the traditional ways of abandoning an underground storage tank.  

Method One: Filling the Tank

Filling an underground storage tank with sand, slurry or concrete are traditional and still popular methods for closing tanks in-place. Sure, these products meet environmental compliance and guarantee a secured site that’s completely sealed, but the permanency of these products is also their biggest drawback. You see, sand, slurry and concrete are very heavy. So if your tank ever needs to be removed in the future for whatever reason, guess what? You’ll first need to dig out that heavy sand or slurry, or jackhammer through the dense, heavy concrete to access the tank. The excavation and removal of these products could wind up costing you more than it did to have them installed in the first place. But there’s no way around it: EPA guidelines stipulate that the tank must be emptied of its contents before either closure in-place or removal.

Yet another issue with the traditional products used to close in-place underground storage tanks: a 100% fill is not guaranteed, particularly with sand. Because sand is poured into the tank (verses the method we’ll be telling you about) a “cone effect” can occur as the product builds up on itself, causing an uneven distribution of sand inside the tank.

So how about the other option for abandoning an underground storage tank? Removal: that method has its drawbacks too. Stay tuned next week when we discuss this method and reveal a better, more cost-effective and painless way to deal with an abandoned tank.

Read part two of this article -- removing underground storage tanks.

Read part three of this article -- our solution for abandoning underground storage tanks.