Vermont
Petroleum Cleanup Fund (PCF)
Vermont's Petroleum Cleanup Fund (PCF) was established under 10 V.S.A. Chapter 59, Section 1941. The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) says it was created to pay, subject to available funding, for certain uninsured costs of cleaning up and restoring soil and groundwater contaminated by releases of petroleum from aboveground storage tanks (ASTs) and underground storage tanks (USTs), and to compensate third party claims for injury and damage caused by such a release. Claims are submitted to DEC's Sites Management Section.
In a Phase I ESA
ASTM E1527-21 does not name a state tank cleanup fund among its standard record sources. The fund matters because it is tied to tank releases: DEC describes it as paying for releases of petroleum from ASTs and USTs. For a property with a tank history, ask whether a PCF claim was made, and read the release and cleanup records behind it. The pages read link no search of leaking tank cases, and this handbook did not open the fund's report attachments described below; see Underground storage tanks, Aboveground storage tanks and Contaminated sites. The general reading of a leaking tank listing is on the LUST page.
DEC's Storage Tanks page adds that financial assistance through the PCF may be available to owners of single family residences, including mobile homes, for the removal of underground or aboveground oil storage tanks used solely for on-premises heating.
What the fund publishes
- Claim rules. Before submitting a claim, DEC points to its 2014 Procedures for Reimbursement from the Petroleum Cleanup Fund, interim maximum reimbursement rates from 2020, interim labor reimbursement rates from 2021 and a PCF Deductible Chart effective July 1, 2023. Its list of allowable rates and updates adds interim waste disposal rates effective April 30, 2024.
- An annual report. The PCF Advisory Committee completes a yearly report on the state of the fund, its financial challenges and recommended solutions. The current report on the page is the 2025 PCF Report. Its attachments include a map the page labels Distribution of VT PCF Releases and a table it labels Expenditures by Site. The page keeps an archive of reports back to 2008. This handbook did not open the reports or their attachments, so it does not say what they list.
Where to look a site up
The pages read link no search of PCF claims or sites. The annual reports and their attachments are on DEC's Petroleum Clean-Up Fund page. DEC says all claims must be submitted to the Sites Management Section by email, at ANR.WMPCFClaims@vermont.gov.
Getting the file
DEC's pages link, in their footer, Request public information and Department of Environmental Conservation Records Liaisons, both on the Agency of Natural Resources' public records page, which this handbook did not read. The pages read for this program give no route of their own for a claim file. For the cleanup file of a site, see Contaminated sites.
Sources
Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation pages, read October 13, 2026, no modified date shown: