Underground tank leak

[bdhsfz6]

I am looking at a property that has an old fuel oil tank for the furnace. I know the property has a tank in the ground and one above ground. The property also has a well for drinking water. If I move forward Ior the seller will have an environmental engineer verify the tank does not leak.

Have any of you had experience with an old abandoned tank and what did you do?

As others have said, get an inspection of both the oil tank AND the well. If both come back clean and you purchase the property, have the in ground tank removed immediately before it becomes an issue.

Back in 1989, a coworker friend bought a cheap fixer. The price was too good to be true and he soon found out why. The 1000 gal in ground tank had been leaking for years and had contaminated the soil in the front yard as well as the neighbors. The cleanup cost almost twice what he paid for the house.

The oil company, who normally filled the tank, had reported the leak to the EPA as required by law. The seller, fully aware of the problem, quickly sold the house cheap and then disappeared. AFAIK, they are still looking for the guy. In the mean time, my friend was left holding the bag.

This nightmare caused me to remove my own in ground tank. I installed two 550 gal tanks in my basement, filled them with the oil from the in ground tank and dug it up when no one was around. Sure enough, it did have a leak but it was fairly small. I cut the tank in half, burned out the oily residue and buried it elsewhere on the property.

 

[MossRoad]

Chip and seal is not the same as oil spraying. It's liquid asphalt and generally stays where it's put. Liquid oil leaches/moves.

 

[dodge man]

Yes, what Mossroad said is correct.

 

[Williy]

You also can have it in the deed stating
seller is responsible for any contamination
and have a lawyer make out the paper work
and have it notarized so you will be in the
clear.

willy

 

[Rockbadchild]

Can someone explain how strategically spilling millions of gallons of oil is legal on public property, but accidentally leaking on private property is illegal? Is it a scientific fact that oil on private land destroys the environment and oil on public land does no damage at all? If so, how do all the shopping centers get away with contaminating the top soil.
Please note the amount of oil being sprayed (3:28).

When I was a kid I remember the road going to Salt Lake City (I-80) was all concrete. Why change what was more environmentally friendly? The old highway was good for many businesses. Cars could rarely exceed 70mph without ending up on the shoulder. Shocks, tires and suspension components would wear quickly. Tow companies, tire, auto parts and of course, new car sales had great benefit from the old highway.
Where I live now, all the concrete is over passes above ground level. The Technology for concrete roads has come a long way over time.

This is just my observation that forms my uneducated opinion.

The stuff that is sprayed is describe and act as glue in the road construction business ... it is only used between layer of asphalt... like asphalt it is a petroleum product like plastic or like any other 6000 petroleum products made every day. Concrete roads are very, very expensive pretty much unaffordable, the base required for concrete roads is astronomical never mind the labor and time required to build them...

 

[4570Man]

I’m not looking to start debate, but I still don’t understand the logic. If it’s a void at the top of the tank that is the concern, pour in the last quarter, over filling, in loose mud. Level out when dry. A fraction of the cost?
There are about 200 gal in a yard of concrete. A train car holds about 9,000 gal. That would require about 45 yards of concrete? That’s 4 and 1/2 truck loads. Even a light grout mix seems expensive.

I wasn’t there when they did it but how are you going to get 45 yards of dirt or sand through a fairly small hole in the top? Writing the check for runny concrete sounds like a cheaper option than trying to deal with that. The runny concrete got the job done fast and with minimal manual labor. They also want the tank ridged so it can’t collapse when something drives over it. It would be hard to ever get dirt packed in tight even if you did spread it by hand.

 

[crashz]

As Rock mentioned, cost of concrete is one item, practicality is another. And moreover, the production of portland cement is not very environmentally friendly either.

As Moss said, liquid oil will not only saturate a column of soil, but will spread when it reaches groundwater. It will also flow with groundwater. When that happens, it's not just the immediate landowner that is affected. Those with wells within the aquifer are and even worse, some of the more dangerous chemicals in the oil are more miscible in water.

 

[crashz]

I wasn’t there when they did it but how are you going to get 45 yards of dirt or sand through a fairly small hole in the top? Writing the check for runny concrete sounds like a cheaper option than trying to deal with that. The runny concrete got the job done fast and with minimal manual labor. They also want the tank ridged so it can’t collapse when something drives over it. It would be hard to ever get dirt packed in tight even if you did spread it by hand.

Right, the "runny concrete" is a Controlled Density Fill or Flow Fill. Once cured, it is an excavatable material that provides structural integrity as equivalent to stiff compacted earth fill. As Moss mentioned, the tanker was located in a an alley with heavy truck traffic. The soil there was supporting that traffic as well as the buildings to each side (assuming that the alley had larger buildings nearby). To ensure that there would be no structural damage to the surrounding buildings, the landowner needed to backfill the tanker in a manner that would not cause any voids in the soil. Filling with CDF is much cheaper than removing the tanker. Pulling it would likely require significant effort and engineered shoring.

 

[MossRoad]

Speaking of the angle of repose... this reminded me of the first time I was introduced to the concept by one of my sisters showing me ant lions in the yard. It's the reverse of a cone of dirt being dumped into a tank, but it's the same concept.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

My brother is a geologist and working with the EPA had a leaking oil tank removed 20 years ago at my parents home at no charge to them. They have a well also.
Me...I'd buy the property with that stipulation, the tank would be properly removed making sure no cost to you or seller would pay for removal.
My brother said federal funds are available for that. I'd want tanks removed before purchase. EPA will test well water, they do it all the time, hauling off any contaminated soil they process (burn). It's no big deal doing it correctly.

 

[Alan W.]

Funny when a fuel oil tank gets a hole you have to get remediation soil removed and replaced plus monitoring.
But when a tanker flips over on a main state hwy in front of my parents house spilling a couple thousand gallons of gas, they put some booms in the creek and sucked up what they could with a vac truck. No soil removed no follow up testing.

 

[BoylermanCT]

I'm a firefighter in CT, and we had an 8,000 gallon gas tanker roll over and lose its load about a month ago. The road was closed for 8 days and they dug up all the soil around the spill site, including the road itself. Replaced it all and repaved that section of road. The trucking company will go bankrupt if it does not have good insurance to pay for the cleanup.

 

[John Joseph McVeigh]

You also can have it in the deed stating
seller is responsible for any contamination
and have a lawyer make out the paper work
and have it notarized so you will be in the
clear.

willy

I believe that applicable laws make anyone in the chain of title responsible... at least as far back in time as the age of the tank. A clause in the sale contract that makes the seller responsible is all fine and dandy, but it is only as good as the seller's willingness and ability to honor its or his or her legal commitments. If the seller is an individual who, say, gets ill and faces massive medical costs, and then dies, such that there is little or nothing in the seller's estate, the seller's contractual commitment to hold the buyer harmless is worth nothing, and the buyer will still be on the hook for clean-up costs.

 

[marhar]

Can someone explain how strategically spilling millions of gallons of oil is legal on public property, but accidentally leaking on private property is illegal? Is it a scientific fact that oil on private land destroys the environment and oil on public land does no damage at all? If so, how do all the shopping centers get away with contaminating the top soil.
Please note the amount of oil being sprayed (3:28).

When I was a kid I remember the road going to Salt Lake City (I-80) was all concrete. Why change what was more environmentally friendly? The old highway was good for many businesses. Cars could rarely exceed 70mph without ending up on the shoulder. Shocks, tires and suspension components would wear quickly. Tow companies, tire, auto parts and of course, new car sales had great benefit from the old highway.
Where I live now, all the concrete is over passes above ground level. The Technology for concrete roads has come a long way over time.

This is just my observation that forms my uneducated opinion.

I remember 30+ or so years ago one could pay a private company to come and "oil" a gravel road with burned motor oil. The DOT would follow behind with a dump truck of sand. The sand and the oil would pack hard. Today, if one were to spray oil on a dirt road they might go to prison.

 

[Streetcar]

Depending on your soil type , removal of underground tank is not terrible expensive. Clay will minimize amount of soil contaminated. FYI common treatment for contaminated soil is to thinly spread on soil with air exposure. I have removed many tanks with big expense of removing contaminated granular materials. Without granular material removal was under$10000

 

[marhar]

I almost bought a house with an inground oil tank. Two questions..is this a foreclosure and are you getting a mortgage?

The home of interest is for sale by owner, as is where is. And it would not be a mortgage. All of that being said, I would have not protection. If I move forward I will either require the owner remove the tank and pay for an assessment or pay for an assessment and I will have the tank removed. The house is on municipal water but it has a well and so do the surrounding homes.

 

[marhar]

Be careful. Had a friend buy a commercial property. A previous owner had unground fuel tanks that he used to fuel equipment with. The previous owner also developed the land behind the business into a housing subdivision with wells and septic tanks.

About five years after my friend purchased the property people in the sub division got to complaining about their water tasting funny. The State Water Resources people started doing testing.

The testing lead to the unknown storage tanks. The civil suits started. The friend had to file for bankruptcy and never did recover.

Be very careful and don’t get holding the bill to clean up a mess made by someone else who did not believe in rules, regulations and laws.

I know of an old gas station that had borrowed money for a major overhaul. During the process they discovered a leaking underground tank. The owner went back to their bank to borrow money to clean the soil. The bank refused to loan money on the land. The owner quit paying on his note. The bank refused to foreclose on the property because the bank did not want the liability.

 

[John Joseph McVeigh]

The home of interest is for sale by owner, as is where is. And it would not be a mortgage. All of that being said, I would have not protection. If I move forward I will either require the owner remove the tank and pay for an assessment or pay for an assessment and I will have the tank removed. The house is on municipal water but it has a well and so do the surrounding homes.

It would be much safer to require, as "a condition precedent to the Buyer's obligation to close the transaction," that the owner will have removed the tank and will have provided a complete report, prepared by a qualified professional, describing the removal process, and attesting to the fact that there were no signs of leakage. That report should include, as an exhibit, the results of lab tests on soil samples taken from areas below the tank and to the sides of the tank. If there is contamination, you do not want to be in the chain of title prior to complete remediation of the site.

 

[marhar]

It would be much safer to require, as "a condition precedent to the Buyer's obligation to close the transaction," that the owner will have removed the tank and will have provided a complete report, prepared by a qualified professional, describing the removal process, and attesting to the fact that there were no signs of leakage. That report should include, as an exhibit, the results of lab tests on soil samples taken from areas below the tank and to the sides of the tank. If there is contamination, you do not want to be in the chain of title prior to complete remediation of the site.

Thank you.

 

[John Joseph McVeigh]

Thank you.

You're most welcome.

The way that I suggested you handle your situation is exactly the way that I myself handled the purchase, sixteen years ago, of the property where I now live.

There was a buried 2,000 gallon tank for home heating oil near the front of the house. The tank had been in the ground for ~ 30 years. Drinking water for the house comes from two wells. Owners of adjoining parcels also rely upon wells for their own drinking water.

There was no foolproof way to gauge the condition of the tank. A tank could pass a "pressure test" on any given day, but then fail a few months later. A pressure test could hasten the failure of the tank.

So, we decided to require the Seller to take the old tank out and to replace it with a tank that I had specified... a 1,000-gallon tank from a company in Ontario called Granby Industries. <Residential Oil Tanks Archives>. I wrote that language into the contract of sale. I also personally observed the removal of the old tank and the installation of the new tank. I have the written report with photographs, and lab-test results, in my files.

As it turned out, the 2,000-gallon tank was in good condition, but we did not -- and could not -- know that until the tank was cut into pieces, and lifted out of the ground.

Better safe than sorry.