Survey of States' 2000 Soils Cleanup Standards for Petroleum Contamination

The establishment of cleanup standards for petroleum-contaminated soils (PCS) at the state level in the U.S. has had a fairly recent history beginning in the mid-1980s. Kostecki et al. (1988) surveyed the 50 states in 1985 and found of the 22 states that reported having established levels of cleanup for PCS, only five states considered the levels formal. The remaining 18 states considered the levels informal with 8 states considering establishing formal levels. Only 1 state had a formal numerical cleanup standard, and 3 had informal numerical standards. One state directly applied federal groundwater standards directly to soils. A follow-up survey in 1987 (Bell et al., 1989) indicated the rapid development of myriad different cleanup standards between and within states, including action levels, remediation goals, cleanup levels, etc. With the implementation of EPA's Office of Underground Storage Tanks final rules for regulating underground storage tanks in 1988 and the existing state of confusion regarding policies, rules and regulations for the cleanup of PCS at the state level, the Association for the Environmental Health of Soils (AEHS) began conducting state-by-state surveys of environmental regulatory agencies in 1990 to determine cleanup standards for PCS for use by the regulated community. The following tables represent AEHS' compilation of state data for PCS cleanup standards for 2000. The Survey was conducted by telephone interviews and submission of written information by the appropriate listed agencies. Many of the states' programs have changed to or are in the process of changing to Risk Based Corrective Action (RBCA) approaches. Thus, the format of the summaries are less standardized than past surveys in order to accurately reflect the states' program. Every attempt has been made to accurately represent states' cleanup standards, however, users should be cautioned to the limitations of compiling complex regulatory information into tabular form. The information should only be used as a reference guide and legal, economic or technical decisions should be based on specific information obtained directly from the appropriate agency in each state for each specific site.