Business ·
Indiana Will Pay Half Your Tank Job. Few Ask.
Four years in, the state's 50 percent reimbursement for tank closure and replacement has never exhausted its annual allotment. Regulators are asking owners to come take the money.
Indiana has spent $21 million helping owners pull or plug more than 500 aging underground tanks. The program covers half the cost of decommissioning and replacement. It is in its fourth year.
It has never once exhausted its annual allotment.
That is the story. Not the $21 million spent. The $59 million that is still sitting there.
How the program works
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management was authorized in 2023 to reimburse tank owners for half of decommissioning and replacement costs, through what the Indiana Capital Chronicle describes as the nation's first proactive reimbursement program for tank closures.
The money comes out of the state's $265 million Excess Liability Trust Fund, which doubles as an approved financial responsibility mechanism for tank owners and operators. It is funded by an inspection fee of one penny per gallon on motor fuels sold or used in Indiana.
Since the program's creation it has disbursed $21 million of $80 million available, against an annual allotment of $20 million that has never been fully claimed.
IDEM spokesman Allen Carter put it plainly to reporters: "We would like to see more applications, more projects come in, because the money is available."
Tim Veatch, petroleum branch chief for IDEM's Office of Land Quality, noted that tanks are typically designed to last about three decades, and that the potential for contamination of soil, indoor air, and drinking water climbs every year past that.
What half looks like on a real job
The Morgan County Highway Department in Martinsville pulled a set of three 30-year-old tanks in July. Superintendent Eddie Fisher put the project at $400,000 to $500,000 to remove the old tanks, replace them, and finish the site.
Against an $8.4 million annual highway budget, that is 5 to 6 percent of everything the county had to spend on roads that year, absorbed in one project.
With the reimbursement, it is half that.
Fisher was direct about why they moved: the contractor told him about the 50 percent savings, and the county decided to take it while it was there.
When crews pried the first 4,000 gallon tank out of the ground, it still carried intact stickers from the 1990s. Carla Gill, director of remediation services at consultant SESCO Group, looked it over: "Looks good, people. It's like the day it went in."
Whether it actually leaked will not be known until the soil and groundwater samples come back. That is the point of pulling it on your schedule instead of finding out on someone else's.
Why the money goes unclaimed
Veatch said the program is advertised through petroleum marketers, contractors, consultants, the inspection program, and mailers. It is still news to some owners.
That is the ordinary reason these funds sit. Nobody whose tanks are working thinks of themselves as a candidate for a closure grant. The owners who most need the match are small operators and local governments running old single-wall steel, and those are exactly the organizations with no one whose job is to track state reimbursement programs.
Fisher's own words on the upgrade: "Double-lined tanks is the new standard, and ours were single-walled tanks before."
What to check on your site
- If you operate tanks in Indiana, find out today whether your sites qualify for ELTF reimbursement. The application is the only thing standing between you and half the cost.
- If you operate elsewhere, ask your state regulator whether a closure or upgrade fund exists and what its balance is. Several states run trust funds off a per gallon fee and not all of them are spending the money down.
- Price the job before you need it. A replacement quote in a drawer turns an emergency into a decision.
- If you run a municipal or county fleet, put the tank replacement in the capital plan now rather than absorbing it whole in the year a tank fails.
- Note what the reimbursement covers. Indiana's covers decommissioning and replacement, which means the upgrade is subsidized, not only the removal.
Reporting by Leslie Bonilla Muñiz for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, published via WFIU. Program details are the state's own.