The Oil Tank Nightmare
-
- May
- 20
I’m in the process of trying to sell my mother’s house in the town of Mamaroneck, and have discovered a frustrating and expensive obstacle that many home sellers may be unaware of: the underground oil tank.
Let me take you down the nightmare trail. First, a good portion of the housing stock in Westchester is old. My mother’s house was built in the 1920s when people used coal furnaces for heat. Later they were converted to oil, and most of the time they put the oil storage tanks underground. And that was it. No one thought about the possibility that the tanks would corrode over time and leak.
Because a lot of these tanks are more than 25 years old, they do leak.
To get my mother’s house ready for sale, we were told we needed to have the outdoor tank inspected and given a clean bill of health. This is where the “fun” began.
The oil company doesn’t do the inspection we learned. You have to go to a company that exclusively does inspections. But as we found out, the inspection guys won’t do the inspection if the tank is outfitted with an old vent. The vent has to be removed and replaced with a modern vent, and only the oil company can do that.
But the oil company won’t do that unless the pipe connecting the vent to the tank is exposed. So I dug a four-foot long trench. The oil guy came and replaced the vent, which cost about $85.
Then the tank inspector came, and of course found a leak, but we won’t know how bad the leak is until we dig the thing out of the ground. Next, the state Department of Environmental Conservation was notified, and we were given 30 days to complete the tank removal.
So then we went back to the oil company and they said they’d install a 250-gallon tank in the basement and arrange for the old one to be dug out of the ground. That operation, will of course, mean destroying that new vent that was put in at a cost of $350.
The cost of the new tank and removal of the leaking tank plus permits will cost $5,000 and change. And by the way, the old tank is 1,000 gallons and still has 750 gallons of unused oil in it. There will be no credit for the oil, which will be disposed of.
OK, ready to go. Right?
Nope. Now I’ve found that I need to get yet another permit for “street entry” from the town for $100. Also, I have to secure a $1,200 bond in case of damage to the street.
What next? I’ll soon found out and will follow up on this blog. In the meantime, take this as a cautionary tale.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 1:04 pm by Phil Reisman.
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Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
You are getting off cheap Phil. Thank your lucky stars you don't have a bath house to make ready for your friends. What do you think the chances are you can use other people's money to take care of the oil tank. Maybe the County Board Of Legislators can put it to a vote, it would be a slam dunk, they live for spending other peoples money.
We are being led by the blind to the edge of the precipice.
Had you gone into politics instead of journalism, Phil, maybe you could get someone who gets a big contract from the state or county to put in another bathroom for you gratis – and replace that tank, too, while they're at it. They just passed another law about taking cardboard from curbside. Where, when they finally bankrupt everyone, will we get the boxes we will need to live in? And if you are lucky enough to find a grate to put your box over, they will tax the grate.
I get this feeling sometimes that a lot of laws are created under pressure from well-intentioned do-gooders, then get perverted by self-sustaining bureaucrats.