SB5223 – Creates a state run financial insurance program for owners and operators of underground petroleum storage tanks.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Wellman (D; 41st District; Mercer Island) (Co-Sponsors MacEwen – R; Lovelett, Nguyen, Salomon, Shewmake – Ds) (By request of the Pollution Liability Insurance Agency.)
Current status – Cancelled hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology at 8:00 AM on Friday February 10th.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1175 is a companion bill in the House.

Summary –
The bill would shift from the current State reinsurance program for underground storage tanks, which assumes part of the risk of private insurance companies’ policies, to a program the State runs itself. The Department of Ecology would manage the program, which would cover owners and operators who registered tanks with the department and complied with its eligibility requirements. The program would provide up to $2 million per release for remedial action and for compensating third parties for bodily injury and property damage while the tank was registered, and up to $1 million for remedial action on releases before registration. Compensation would be limited to $3 million a year for releases from a single tank. Ecology would give preference to covering remedial costs, and could prioritize reimbursement based on the threats posed to human health and the environment; whether the people threatened might include a vulnerable population or an overburdened community; and other factors it chose. It would collect an annual fee for the costs of administering the program, which could not exceed $25,000 per participant.

The bill would return the tax on the wholesale value of petroleum products which funds claim payments through the Pollution Liability Insurance Program Trust Account to thirty one-hundredths of one percent from its reduction to half that in 2021. (The tax isn’t collected in a quarter if that account contains more than a set minimum or maximum; the bill doubles those amounts, to keep the account between $15 million and $30 million.) If there were not enough money in that account to pay claims, they’d be prioritized for future payment in the order they were filed, except that any creating an imminent threat to health or the environment would come first.

The bill includes allowing Ecology to assess tanks to determine program or cost eligibility, recover overpayments, and investigate or clean up a release with the owner or operator’s permission. It could deal with releases from tanks that weren’t in the program if they created risks to drinking water or were necessary to protect health and the environment in marginalized, overburdened, and underserved communities; and the owner consented and agreed to repaying the costs.