Streamlining the Remediation of Leaking Underground Fuel Tanks (LUFT): Updating the California LUFT Manual

The State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) is in the process of drafting a Revised California LUFT Manual, a manual intended to provide technical guidance to all stakeholders on the investigation and remediation of leaking underground storage tanks (USTs) in the State of California.

It is SWRCB's hope that the drafting of the manual will be a collaborative effort and have taken many measures to invite input from all stakeholders.  The process began with SWRCB hosting four public meetings across the state to collect information and ideas for updating the California LUFT manual and to invite discussions on how to improve the overall process of UST remediation within the state. 

Raw input received at each of the four public meetings was compiled and is posted on the Public Meetings page.  The input was consolidated into major topic areas, a Table of Contents was developed, and a wiki site was created that enabled interested persons to contribute to the content of the new LUFT manual.  The wiki site was open for five months and much information was contributed.  At this point, working groups are distilling the information into a usable manual.  It is anticipated that a draft manual will be available for public review in October 2009.

Background: Since the inception of the UST program in 1984, more than 45,000 leaking USTs have been discovered . Having remediated approximately 33,000 of these sites, the LUFT cleanup program has been very successful. Nonetheless, approximately 12,000 leaking UST sites remain to be remediated.  

The LUFT manual was introduced in 1989 as an attempt to outline best management practices and procedures for corrective action. Many lessons have been learned about successful and efficient investigation and remediation of leaking UST sites in the past 19 years. It is time that we incorporate what has been learned into an updated LUFT manual.

The new LUFT manual is envisioned as a guidance document, and is not meant to supersede existing regulations on cleanup levels, regulatory processes, or other directives. Therefore, the manual will be constrained in scope.