T he Department of Environmental Protection may soon get authority to regulate the placement of oil tanks on or very near groundwater aquifers. It's about time. The bill is the direct result of several spills that damaged drinking-water supplies in several Maine communities. During the debate over the gasoline additive MTBE a couple of years back, the contamination of drinking water from even small spills was described as widespread. Storage tanks can contain thousands of gallons of fuel, and leaking over an aquifer could be catastrophic.
Maine is blessed with abundant clean drinking water.
We're pleased the DEP is pushing hard for this bill because it's an important step in ensuring we'll be able to say that far into the future. Nothing could be further from the truth. I even voted for him, twice, and was the first columnist to predict that he would win the original race. I only object to the way he gets an idea in his head, like globalization, or business development, or laptops, or salmon, and won't let go, like a pit bull with a bone. I remember his pointing out once at a business meeting that there was a tremendous market for air conditioners in South America.