Cleanup funding benefits energy giants

The program was established to help mom-and-pop companies repair the environment. But large firms get the money.

Reporting from Sacramento — Some of the country’s wealthiest oil companies and gas station chains have collected hundreds of millions of dollars from a cleanup fund conceived to help smaller, financially struggling entities.

Environmentalists and former lawmakers who pushed to establish the fund, which motorists pay into whenever they buy gasoline in California, say they never intended it for large energy companies with the means to repair environmental damage from their own operations. Yet big firms have taken $490 million from the fund since it was created in 1989.

Although the number of small businesses tapping the fund has dropped sharply, the program has been extended repeatedly amid lobbying by the big, politically powerful corporations. Those companies are now positioned to collect up to $900 million more.

Among the beneficiaries of the fund is Exxon Mobil Corp., which earned a record $45.2-billion profit last year.

The logic behind the fund was that “mom-and-pop service stations wouldn’t have the money for this,” said V. John White, a veteran environmental lobbyist, referring to the cost of removing leaky underground storage tanks and cleansing contaminated soil.

LA Times