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.
Where petroleum was leaking into soil, it was fouling water supplies. Some small businesses in rural areas had been bankrupted by the cleanup costs. Some were abandoning their properties.
Former state Sen. Barry Keene, the North Coast Democrat after whom the tank cleanup fund is named, said the legislation he drafted to create it was intended, in particular, to help small businesses and individuals in his rural district. In an interview, he recalled being moved by one Californian who inherited property requiring cleanup that would have cost significantly more than the land was worth.
"We had cases like that," he said, so the fund was aimed "toward the shallow pockets."
Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, also a Democrat, worked with Keene on the legislation as a state senator. "We felt the big oil companies could take care of themselves," he said.
Big oil companies were to fund most of the cleanup kitty through a fee levied by the state. They pass the fee on to drivers at the pump.
The large companies successfully lobbied for access to the fund at its inception and secured a provision guaranteeing them at least 14% of the money, according to company officials and legislative staff. Since that time, state records show, the companies have received nearly 20% of the approximately $2.4 billion in payouts.
