The US EPA recently published its semi-annual report of UST Performance Measures, or “State of the UST Nation” as we at UST Training like to call it. So check out what’s out there, what got inspected, and what was found, nationwide, between October 1, 2018 and September 30, 2019.
| Number | Item |
| 546,192 | Active Individual USTs |
| 197,000 | UST Sites (Approximately) |
| 87,371 | UST Inspections |
| 5,375 | Confirmed Releases |
| 2% | Of All Nation’s UST Had Confirmed Releases |
| 86.6% | In Compliance with Operator Training |
| 90% | In Compliance with Financial Responsibility |
| 74.3% | In Compliance with Walkthrough Inspections |
| 68% | In Basic Compliance with Release Detection, Spill/Overfill Prevention and Corrosion Protection |
| 43% | In Overall Compliance Including New EPA Test Requirements |
A few things stand out.
- About 2% of all USTs out there were discovered to be leaking. So if you had 100 tank owners in a room together, at least two of them would represent leakers.
- Compliance with operator training is surprisingly high, almost 87%. Good news! It would seem that folks are getting trained.
- Compliance on walkthrough inspections is also pretty high. About 3/4 of all sites are having it done. Hopefully your operator training is helping you know how to do it correctly.
- Compliance with the new testing requirements dropped the nation’s overall compliance from 68% (Basic Compliance) to 43% (Overall Compliance, a full 25% drop. We expected this to happen with some many sumps and other devices to test. Hopefully the number will slowly start to climb once everyone gets onboard with the new testing requirements.
For the full report to see how each state and region did, click here
Interesting in talking UST compliance on a big picture? Need some ideas to improve compliance in your state or company? Want to know how operator training can help? Contact us for a chat.