EDITORIAL : RUNNING ON EMPTY; GIVEN THAT IT HAD 10 YEARS TO DO IT, THERE'S NO GOOD REASON FOR THE CITY'S FAILURE TO UPGRADE FUEL TANKS.

FOR 10 years the city has been under orders from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to replace all of its underground fuel tanks with ones that are designed to prevent leakage of gasoline.

In typical fashion, no one took the lead to get it done by Wednesday's deadline. Because of that, the city's General Services Department had to shut down indefinitely as many as 40 fueling sites, including those at two San Fernando Valley police stations.

What this means is that police officers will be filling up at local gas stations, paying retail prices while the city digs up the old tanks and puts in new, doubled-lined versions.

On the broader scale, it symbolizes the complete ineptitude of the current system of government, where no one is accountable and no City Council member will take the lead unless it affects his own little fiefdom.

In 1988, federal environmental officials ordered all gas stations - governmental and commercial - to upgrade their tanks to those that prevent gas from seeping into the groundwater. Installing a new tank at a commercial filling station can cost up to $200,000.

The EPA also decreed that any fueling station not in compliance by Dec. 22, 1998, must be closed until fixed.

The City Council apparently never took the deadline seriously.

Initially, the council failed to appoint one agency, or one person, to oversee the replacement program. Instead, as always seems to be the case, the city allowed each department to work out the problem on its own. This, in turn, proved to be the most dysfunctional, haphazard and costly way to achieve the goal.

Subsequently, the city spent $19.3 million between 1988 and 1996 replacing and repairing 450 tanks. However, only 125 of them comply with the strict guideline now in effect.

The city's General Services Department doled out an additional $11.5 million from 1990-94 to fix leaking tanks but did not replace them with the double-walled variety.

Had a single entity been responsible, someone might have informed the General Services Department to install the newer tanks at those stations it intended to keep open.

Earlier this year, the council wised up and transferred the entire replacement program to General Services. Alas, it was a little too late.

Eric Rose, an aide to Councilwoman Laura Chick, described the fiasco as ``the death of common sense.'' Unfortunately, we don't think it was ever alive.

Now the city will spend millions more to upgrade its now-shuttered facilities and paying for gas by the gallon with credit cards.

Taxpayers ought to be fed up with nonsense like this that wastes vast sums of their money while basic needs like streets, sidewalks and police services are shortchanged.

At the least, they have a right to demand a full and open investigation of how such financial and planning debacles occur and who is responsible.

You'd think 10 years was enough time to get it right.