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51 Envtl. L. Rep. 10054 (2021)
Governing the Gasoline Spigot: Gas Stations and the Transition away from Gasoline

handle is hein.journals/elrna51 and id is 56 raw text is: Copyright 0 2021 Environmental Law Institute, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELRO, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120. GOVERNING THE GASOLINE SPIGOT: GAS STATIONS AND THE TRANSITION AWAY FROM GASOLINE by Matthew N. Metz and Janelle London Matthew N. Metz is the founder and Co-Executive Director of Coltura, a nonprofit working to accelerate the switch from gasoline and diesel to cleaner alternatives. Janelle London is Co-Executive Director of Coltura. SUMMARY Gas stations are America's largest carbon spigot, a leading source of neighborhood-based pollution, and a sacred cow. This Article takes a comprehensive look at gas stations through the lens of the climate crisis and the rise of electric vehicles, and proposes steps to improve and shrink the country's gas station network in an environmentally and fiscally prudent manner. It argues that state and local government should regulate gas stations to advance their climate goals, reduce pollution of air, soil, and groundwater, improve public health, and save taxpayers money. They should require them to clean up their contaminated soils, install modern tanks and piping, and abide by strict limits on carcinogenic benzene emissions. They should also halt con- struction of new gas stations and eliminate subsidies for existing ones. O n 45th Street, in the heart of Seattle's vibrant Wallingford district, amidst a jumble of coffee shops, restaurants, offices, and houses, is a busi- ness prominently exhibiting the logo of one of the world's largest corporations. For more than a decade, this busi- ness has been polluting the water flowing into nearby Lake Union with benzene, a known carcinogen and fish toxin, at a level more than 360 times the legal limit.' It spews benzene vapors at the window of a house 10 feet away and at the other tightly packed, expensive homes clustered nearby. About six million pounds of carbon flows from the business into the atmosphere every year. What is this business, and how can it get away with such copious pollution in an upscale neighborhood just a stone's throw from the University of Washington? The business is the Wallingford Shell gas station, and the pollution it causes is typical of gas stations in every neighborhood in the United States. Occupying busy street corners everywhere, gas stations have long been an inexhaustible source of gasoline for driv- ers and a powerful symbol of the centrality of gasoline in American life. They are the final link in a long supply chain that starts in distant oil fields and ends in air pollution and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). 1. Washington State Department of Ecology, Shell 120877, https://apps.ecol- ogy.wa.gov/gsp/Sitepage.aspx?csid=5569 (last visited Nov. 9, 2020). Government took a laissez-faire approach to regulating gas stations from their emergence in the 1910s until the 1980s. In 1984, a 60 Minutes expose of gasoline contami- nation of drinking water in Long Island spurred a wave of federal and state laws mandating replacement of gas sta- tions' underground storage tanks (USTs) and vapor recov- ery systems.2 While regulations instituted in the 1980s and 1990s reduced some sources of gas station pollution, gas stations have continued to pollute the air, soil, and water.3 Gas stations have received little attention from policy- makers in recent years, even though their toxins are widely present in neighborhoods and their pumps are one of the largest sources of carbon pollution.4 Of the 14 legal jour- nal articles relating to gas stations published since 1990, all focus narrowly on financial responsibility related to leaking USTs and contaminated soils.5 None provides a broader 2. Candace Gauthier, The Enforcement of Federal Underground Storage Tank Regulations, 20 ENVT L. 261, 266-67 (1990); Mark D. Oshinskie, Tanks for Nothing: Oil Company Liability for Discharges of Gasoline From Underground Storage Tanks Divested to Station Owners, 18 VA. ENV T L.J. 1, 3 (1999). 3. E. Blaine Rawson, Are We Properly Controlling Our LUSTs?: A Review of the Problems With Underground Storage Tank Regulation, 40 IDAHO L. REV. 111, 114-17 (2003). 4. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas- emissions (last updated Sept. 9, 2020). 5. See Scott Owens, State v. Green: Redefining the Environmental Responsibil- ity of Landowners in New York, 8 ALB. L. ENV'T OUTLOOK J. 108 (2002); Amanda Cohen Leiter, Environmental Insurance: Does It Defy the Rules?, 25 HARV. ENV'T L. REV. 259 (2001); Sharman Braff, Oil Companies and ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 51 ELR 10054 1-2021

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