(Kansas City, Ks.)– A Texas-based pipeline company has agreed to pay a $450,000 civil penalty to the federal government to settle allegations that it failed to prepare and maintain proper facility response plans to deal with spills and environmental accidents at eight of its oil storage terminal facilities in Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska.
NuStar Pipeline Operating Partnership of San Antonio, Texas has also agreed to spend an additional $768,000 on a supplemental environmental project to install and operate tank volume monitoring and alarm systems at several of its facilities.
The provisions are spelled out in a consent degree filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Omaha.
Eight of NuStar’s facilities were affected by the degree, including those in Milford, LeMars and Rock Rapids locally, along with ones in Kansas and Nebraska. The eight facilities have a combined storage capacity of more than 71 million gallons of oil.
The Federal Clean Water Act requires facilities that store large quantities of oil to develop response plans that outline procedures for addressing “worst-case” discharges of oil.
The EPA initially discovered several NuStar facilities didn’t have facility response plans during inspections in 2006. The company subsequently prepared plans for each facility after the EPA launched an investigation.
