Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 16, 1995 TAG: 9505160049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MONTVALE LENGTH: Long
The picture showed a volunteer fireman standing knee-deep in a pool of gasoline surrounding one of the giant oil storage tanks.
The 63,000-gallon spill was a public relations nightmare for the Amoco terminal, where King was a dispatcher at the time.
"Back then, things were a lot different," says King, now the terminal manager. That just wouldn't happen today, she says.
Amoco and many other oil companies, including those at Montvale, are trying to overcome that 1982 image. They are modernizing facilities and improving spill and emergency response procedures. Although federal and state laws have driven many of these advances, the oil industry takes pride in its current environmental and safety practices.
"The company always tries to go above and beyond what's been mandated," said Dian H. Boothe, a spokesman for Texaco, which has one of its Star Enterprise affiliate tank farms in Montvale.
"We have every company plan you can think of, and we try to live by them," said Ed Flowers, Star's terminal manager.
On a recent tour of Star's tank farm in Montvale, Flowers and Boothe told visitors how computers control almost every aspect of the operation. They also pointed out the many backup systems that would alert workers to any problem during oil transfers.
Bulk oil shipments from the interstate Colonial Pipeline are scheduled ahead, sometimes days in advance. Star keeps a person at the terminal during all shipments, even at night.
That employee checks the alarms that would warn if the tank is getting too full. "They're piercing enough, we go right up out of the chair when they come on," Flowers said.
Sometimes employees climb the 70 stairs that spiral up the side of the mammoth tanks to manually check the tank level. They also walk along the pipelines every hour during a shipment to check for leaks, malfunctioning equipment and other problems.
"I don't want leaks. That's the last thing I want," said Flowers, a 33-year Texaco employee.
At Amoco, King follows a similar procedure. An employee checks all the systems an hour before a shipment and must be on site an hour before it ends. In between, however, Amoco allows employees to return home if they wish, King said. Depending on the amount, a shipment can take three hours or longer, she said.
Every morning, an employee walks through Amoco's 24-acre tank farm checking equipment and looking for oil sheens on the ground and in the south fork of Goose Creek, King said.
Oil companies have stepped up routine maintenance of the tank farms, partly in response to stricter regulations in Virginia.
All six Amoco tanks have undergone a complete inspection for structural soundness since 1991. A pinhole was found in one tank and immediately fixed. No oil leaked out, though, King said.
Both Star and Amoco have moved almost all their pipes above ground, where leaks and other problems are easier to spot. Over the past couple of years, they have installed machines to capture vapors coming off tanker trucks as they fill up at the giant pumps.
Truckers used to open a hole in the top of their trucks and pump in the gas, letting all the vapors escape into the air, stinking up the community. Now, they load gas into the bottom of the truck, and the gas pumps have thick rubber airtight seals to prevent vapors from escaping. Excess vapors are contained and recycled.
To measure ground water contamination, Star has dug 17 monitoring wells, Amoco 32. Many were drilled at the request of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality in the late 1980s after the terminals reported spills.
Samples are taken monthly and analyzed for petroleum components.
Conoco does things a little differently at its Montvale terminal, said Larry Winder, the company's director of operations in Baltimore.
It only recently put in three monitoring wells to meet Virginia's regulations, in effect since 1992. Conoco had no reason to suspect it had a problem, he said.
"We do not have a record of leaking tank bottoms," Winder said, and Conoco has had no recent spills, except for one of about 10 gallons. But Conoco did find contamination when those wells went in, and is currently removing oil - less than one-tenth of a gallon per month - that is floating on the water table, Winder said.
"We don't really know where it's coming from. We assume it's residual from that leak years ago," he said. In 1980, about 1,100 gallons of petroleum spilled when a valve was left open, according to state records.
Winder said Conoco plans to leave its pipes underground, because it vigorously checks for weak spots. An electrical current is sent through the pipes and tanks to prevent corrosion, a process called cathodic protection that most other oil companies use as well.
Further, Conoco pressure tests each section of pipe periodically, and all six tanks have been internally inspected at least once in the past 10 years, Winder said. Depending on how well the steel is protected, he said, the tanks can last hundreds of years.
Conoco recently drilled several holes in the ground near the pipes and beneath its tanks. A vacuum-like machine sucks air out of the ground, which is then tested for hydrocarbons, Winder said.
"To my knowledge we have not found any leaking equipment. We have had none there," Winder said of the Montvale terminal.
The six companies in Montvale are members of the Roanoke Valley Mutual Aid Association, King said. They meet quarterly with other sectors of the petroleum industry - truck drivers, service station owners and so on - private environmental consulting firms, and local government representatives to develop and update plans for assistance in case of spills.
They also exchange information to keep abreast of the latest technology and regulations.
"We place an awful lot of emphasis on the environmental end of things," Winder said.
Staff writer Richard Foster contributed information for this story.
by CNB