Thousands of New Jersey businesses need to store petroleum products at their facilities, whether for heating, to fuel vehicles, for emergency generators, or a dozen other pressing needs. Today there are estimated to be in excess of 80,000 regulated commercial tanks in New Jersey alone. Most are underground, some above ground and, recently, some combining the best of both methods, the concrete vaulted tanks. In this article I will take a look at each approach for its strengths, weaknesses and cost factors.

UNDERGROUND STORAGE TANKS (USTs)

Historically, petroleum storage was literally driven underground by a variety of concerns centered around fire safety. Because of these concerns, and the regulations they spawned, the overwhelming majority of storage tanks in use today are underground tanks.

In the past five years the federal EPA and State Departments of Environmental Protection and Energy (DEPE) have formulated new construction criteria for both the installation of new tanks and the required upgrade of existing tanks.

With scheduled deadlines for these tank upgrades quickly approaching, tank owners are faced with some difficult economic decisions. The cost for tank and piping upgrades starts at $10,000, and, in most cases, retrofitting an existing steel underground storage tank is a short-sighted and expensive undertaking. Due to variable water tables and the predominance of clay and silt soils, both vapor monitoring and continuous groundwater monitoring are impractical, if not impossible, and in all cases will only alert a tank owner of a leak after the damage has occurred.

With these concerns complicating the upgrade, the most effective solution, if we stay with conventional underground storage, is often complete replacement of a given storage tank system This then expands the price range of a standard 2,000 gallon tank job to a minimum of $20,000. (triple this number for a 12,000 gallon tank).*

In addition to these basic construction costs, there are significant costs associated with simply maintaining and operating underground tanks. These expenses must also be considered when we evaluate the total project cost. For purposes of comparison, let