FOLLANSBEE, W.Va. — A Brooke County storage facility has agreed to take action to prevent the threat of oil spills as part of a settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Koppers Inc., located near the Ohio River in Follansbee, was not prepared to contain oil, if spilled, during the time of the EPA’s inspection.
“Koppers, over the time, had not conducted integrity testing of the tanks, which is really having an expert come out and using various methods, making sure that the tanks are still capable of holding their content,” said EPA attorney James Van Orden.
The containment at the facility was also inadequate with structural issues, Van Orden said.
Under the agreement, Van Orden said Koppers will prepare a plan for a risk-based way to figure out which above-ground storage tanks should be integrity tested first. The plan would then be submitted to the federal EPA for approval before testing would take place.
Van Orden said even though the January 2014 Freedom Industries chemical spill is unrelated to this settlement, the incident — which caused a water emergency in parts of nine West Virginia counties, brought attention to what needed to be done at the Koppers site.
“The whole prevention program is really built on an idea that having things in place in advance can stop a catastrophic spill,” he said. “Preventing a spill is the wise thing to do rather than having a large spill and try to undo the damage that they can do both to recreational users of the river or folks who rely on the Ohio River for drinking water source.”
The tank evaluation will be conducted by an independent expert, according to an EPA release.