Enrolled Bill Summary

            House Bill 2687 amends the Water Code to postpone by three years, to September 1, 2006, the expiration of the groundwater protection cleanup program relating to storage tanks. The bill sets related deadlines for the phase out of reimbursements from the petroleum storage tank remediation account. It increases, as the program nears termination, the percentage of gross receipts from the account that the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission may use for administrative expenses. It revises petroleum product delivery fees, eliminating their March 1, 2002, expiration and deleting certain other contingency provisions. The bill establishes a sliding scale for the five fee amounts based on cargo tank capacity, with an initial one-third decrease for FY2002 and FY2003, followed by a 20 percent decrease from those amounts in FY2004 and FY2005, followed by a halving of those amounts in FY2006, followed by a 60 percent decrease from the FY2006 amounts for FY2007. The bill sets deadlines for specified actions by persons performing corrective action on substance releases reported to the commission before December 22, 1998, and includes certain disincentives for failure to meet the corrective action deadlines. A definitional change clarifies legal possession or ownership of an interest in an underground storage tank system or an aboveground storage tank.