Pipeline company with Plymouth County facility fined

A Texas-based pipeline company with an oil storage facility in rural Le Mars will pay $450,000 in fines for not having required emergency plans at the Le Mars facility and seven others.

NuStar Pipeline Operating Partnership, with a storage terminal 7 miles north of Le Mars on Highway 75, faced allegations of failing to create and maintain response plans to deal with spills and environmental accidents at eight storage facilities in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas, according to a news release from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The San Antonio, Texas-based company has been the subject of investigation since 2006, when the EPA found several NuStar facilities didn't have the emergency plans required under the Clean Water Act.

That law requires companies that store large quantities of oil to prepare plans and hold practice drills to best protect the environment in case of a major spill.

According to a spokeswoman from NuStar, during the company's own safety and environmental review of the facilities, company officials discovered that the terminals did not have EPA-approved facility response plans in place.

"NuStar began working toward this compliance, but before this effort was completed, EPA officials conducted audits at the facilities in July 2006 and cited the terminals," she stated.

The facilities already had spill prevention plans in place, as required by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which were similar to the EPA-required plans, she added.

All the terminals in question are now in compliance with EPA's regulations, she said.

NuStar's penalties stem from dates beginning in the 1990s.

"The penalty imposed reflects the serious nature of non-compliance with these important requirements," said Ignacia S. Moreno, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division. "We are pleased that NuStar has come into compliance with the law and that it will be upgrading its emergency control equipment."

The rural Le Mars facility includes 12 bulk liquid tanks and can store a total of 104,167 barrels of oil. It is less than a mile from the West Branch Floyd River and its tributaries, according to government documents.

Along with the Le Mars facility, those affected include locations in Milford and Rock Rapids, Iowa; Columbus, Geneva and Norfolk, Neb. and Hutchinson and Salina, Kan.

Together, those facilities have a total storage capacity of more than 71 million gallons of oil.

"These are some of the largest oil storage terminals not just in the region, but in the United States," EPA Regional Administrator Karl Brooks said. "The importance of complying with requirements for spill responses and emergency preparedness cannot be overstated. Proper preparation for spills and emergencies can help avoid large-scale environmental disasters."

Along with the fines, NuStar also agreed to buy, install and operate $768,000 worth of volume monitoring and alarm systems at a number of the facilities, according to documents filed in late February in U.S. District Court in Omaha.

"To further ensure ongoing compliance, NuStar has implemented a corporate tracking plan in which NuStar health, safety and environmental officials will work directly with regional environmental officials on compliance issues to resolve them quickly and effectively," the company spokeswoman said.

NuStar's consent decree must undergo a 30-day public comment period and receive final approval by the court. A copy of the consent decree is available on the Justice Department Web site at http://www.justice.gov/enrd/Consent_Decr.... The comment period has yet to be set.