The standard is the legacy.
Ken Wilcox founded this company in 1989 as an independent testing laboratory, and set a standard for how the work would be done: publish the method, attach the report, let the result stand on its own. KWA leads this industry because that standard has been kept for more than thirty years — not because it was set once.
What gets protected
Underneath every service station there are tanks, and underneath those there is groundwater. A leak detection system that reports clean when it isn’t doesn’t fail on paper — it fails into somebody’s water. Everything here follows from that.
KWA has no stake in the systems it evaluates — it doesn’t build them, doesn’t sell them, and doesn’t take a position in the companies that do. It has never softened a result to keep an account. The verdict isn’t negotiable, because what’s on the other side of it isn’t a contract.
- United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA)
- American Petroleum Institute (API)
- Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
- British Standards Institute (BSI)
- California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB)
- United States Navy
Nine protocols. Thirty-eight evaluations. All of it public.
This is the standard, stated plainly, so it can be held against us. Every claim below is something a visitor can click through and verify in the next thirty seconds.
Nine evaluation protocols, written between 1996 and 2003, covering continuous in-tank leak detection, bulk field-constructed tanks, ATG probe comparison, mass-based detection on large ASTs, double-wall pipe, secondary containment, vacuum interstitial monitoring, and video inspection of lined steel tanks. Every one is on this site, free, in full. A manufacturer can read exactly how their system will be measured before they ship it to us.
Three of the nine are still labeled Draft or Proposed Method. They have been published that way for two decades rather than dressed up as finished work. Saying “this one isn’t settled yet” in public, where competitors can read it, is the same standard turned inward. The alternative was always available. It was never taken.
Thirty-eight third-party evaluations across fifteen manufacturers and eleven method types, dating back to 1991 — each one searchable, with the full evaluation report attached as a PDF. Not a summary, not a marketing sheet. The report. Free to consult, no account required, competitors included.
A new technology arrives with nothing to be measured against. Somebody has to build the procedure, publish it, and defend it in front of regulators and the manufacturers it will judge. KWA has done that repeatedly — protocol development is a service here precisely because the industry kept needing standards that didn’t exist yet.
The Fuels Management Research Center in Grain Valley holds full-scale tanks, more than 400 feet of instrumented pipeline, and controlled leak simulation — the largest independent facility of its kind. When a method has to be proven where it actually operates, evaluations run in the field instead, anywhere in the world.
Since 1995, KWA has sponsored Leaklist — a free discussion list for the leak detection industry, competitors and regulators included. No fee, no business case, thirty years running. An industry that talks to itself gets better faster, and getting better was the point.
A laboratory that hides its methods is asking to be trusted. One that publishes them is offering to be checked. That choice was made in 1989, and it has been made again every year since — because a standard isn’t something you set, it’s something you keep. That is the whole of why a KWA certification still carries the weight it does.
All nine, in full, exactly as written — including the ones still marked draft.
View protocolsThirty-eight evaluations by manufacturer, method type, and system — each with its full report.
Search certificationsServices
Independent evaluation of leak detection methods against EPA and industry protocols — the certification regulators and tank owners rely on.
Full R&D facilities for manufacturers developing new leak detection methods, from early concept through a system ready for evaluation.
Evaluations conducted on site, anywhere in the world, when a method has to be proven where it actually operates.
Writing the test procedures themselves. When a new technology has no protocol to be measured against, one has to be built and defended.
Expert consultation and testimony on leak detection performance, methodology, and evaluation practice.
A public, searchable record of every system KWA has certified — kept current and free to consult.
Why it stays the standard
Being the industry’s reference point isn’t a position you take and hold. It is re-earned every time a report goes out — every time the method is published instead of protected, the draft is labeled honestly instead of dressed up, and the result is delivered as measured instead of as hoped.
The protocols are still published. The reports are still attached. The drafts still say draft. The list is still free. The answer is still not for sale.
That is the standard we were handed, and it is the standard we keep.