Thousands of Vancouver homeowners have environmentally hazardous underground oil storage tanks on their property but might not know they exist.

It may be costly, but a city manager says homeowners with old oil tanks buried in their backyards should have the potentially hazardous items removed as soon as possible. Photo by Dan Toulgoet

Doug Roberts, manager of the city’s environmental protection branch, says homeowners should find out whether a tank is buried on their property and hire professional contractors to remove it to avoid major problems in the future. A city bylaw requires the removal of tanks out of service for more than two years.

“There are probably literally thousands of tanks still in the ground out there,” Roberts said. “I get calls almost daily from potential purchasers or real estate agents or lawyers, acting on behalf of purchasers, wanting to know about [the issue].”

Before natural gas became available in 1957, many homes were heated by furnace oil. The tank feeding the furnace was stored underground and held between 300 and 1,000 gallons of oil.

Once houses were converted to natural gas, the tanks were often left buried beneath the soil and not all were emptied properly.

The containers rust and can allow oil to leach into the soil. The oil can then find its way into an older home’s perimeter drainage system and flow into the storm sump, resulting in a fuel oil odor inside the home. The oil can also run into a neighbour’s drainage system and cause the same problem.

City staff don’t inspect properties-homeowners must determine on their own whether a tank is buried on their property and have it removed. Tanks must be removed under a permit from the city’s fire prevention office. A homeowner should use a contractor to remove the tank and hire a property surveyor if necessary if no visible signs of a tank are obvious.

A fire inspector checks the site when the tank is pulled out for evidence of soil contamination. Minor contamination may require some soil removal, but the environmental protection branch orders a professional cleanup plan for major problems.

In the past, leaving the abandoned tanks in the ground and filling them with sand was standard practice. But Roberts said that’s not the ideal option because the sand doesn’t always fill all the voids in a tank.

He warned that some insurance companies won’t provide insurance unless a problem tank is addressed.

In a recent case, a homeowner didn’t want to deal with the tank on his property, but the new purchaser wanted to find out whether there was a contamination problem. The homeowner agreed to allow the potential new buyer to take the tank out at his cost. It turned out the soil was badly contaminated and the purchaser backed out of the deal.

“The homeowner was left with a huge hole in his back yard and substantial funds would have to be spent to clean it up. There’s still legal actions happening in that one,” Roberts said.

In another situation, an elderly woman phoned Roberts in tears because the insurance agent she’d used for years retired and handed the files to another company.

The new company sent clients letters asking whether there were oil fuel storage tanks on their properties. The woman acknowledged she had one.

A registered letter soon informed her that it must be removed within two weeks or her insurance would be invalid. “She didn’t have any money. She was house-rich and cash-starved [and] wondering what she was going to do to try and get this tank out,” Roberts recalled.

Homeowners might feel little incentive to check out their property for tanks out of fear they could face a costly removal and cleanup.

But Roberts says the initial effort is worthwhile. “They could have a bit of a time bomb sitting there. The tank could be intact today, but it could have a couple of hundred gallons of oil in it-all tanks weren’t pumped out when people converted to gas,” he said. “Eventually, every tank is going to start leaking at some point in time. The quicker you can deal with it and get the oil out of the tank is certainly going to lessen your liability in the future.”

Fabio Chiesa, owner of CERC Tank Removal, has worked in the business for 15 years.

“If you sell your home, you’ll have to do it no matter what,” he said. “The odds are it’ll get a lot worse [in time]. If you keep letting it go, it will contaminate the soil because the tank will continue to deteriorate.”

Pulling up a tank costs $2,000. Environmental consultants, who sign off on a property after analyzing five soils samples, charge about $1,500 to $2,000. Soil removal also costs more money.

Chiesa estimates total costs run between $5,000 and $10,000.