Record Keeping Requirements

What records to keep and how long to keep them seems to puzzle many tank owners. It’s not surprising considering how many documents a tank owner may accumulate at a location during a given period of time. Tank owners get confused over what’s important and what’s not important, so many tank owners keep everything and when an inspector arrives he is confronted with a mountain of paper and told something like, "I think everything you need will be in here." Please understand that an inspector generally has other inspections scheduled when he is in the field and does not have the time to peruse many pieces of paper to extract the records he is interested in. It is the tank owner’s job to have the records available and if not an inspector may simply ask you to send the appropriate records to his office.

For a 1-page summary of what records you need to keep and for how long according to the UST rules Chapter 1200-1-15-.03, click here.

Please be aware that there are other record keeping requirements elsewhere in the rules, but this covers corrosion protection, repairs, and release detection. There is also documentation you should maintain, such as UST installation records, and records of what kind of overfill protection you have installed if it is not apparent to an inspector during a site visit. For instance, check valves and ball float valves are not visible to an inspector, so you should have installation records documenting that they are present where needed.