News

An underground oil tank was the source of a small spill that leaked into Swan Creek and the Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary, a Saanich municipal manager says.

The leak, which was reported Jan. 11 by sanctuary staff, was traced back to a tank in a yard on Easter Road at Saanich Road, said Ben Bowker, Saanich’s manager of storm and wastewater.

The municipality dug up and plugged drains at that property line to prevent further leakage, while the homeowner hired a company to pump out and remove the tank and do remediation work, Bowker said.

Location may be the golden rule in real estate, but there’s likely a new one biting at its heels in the wake of a series of fuel spills involving home heating oil from storage tanks both above and below ground.

The new rule: If you plan to buy or sell a house, find out if there’s an oil tank buried on the property before it costs you.

“It’s all about due diligence, from both sides,” said Carol Crabb, president of the Victoria Real Estate Board. “Both buyers and sellers need to do their homework.”

Another day, another spill on the Colquitz River.

Saanich public works crews on Wednesday were trying to locate the source of another fuel spill on the urban waterway.

Volunteer river steward Dorothy Chambers discovered the fuel spill Tuesday. She notified Saanich public works, who responded quickly, building a siphon dam to stop the contamination from spreading.

“We suctioned it out two times right away,” said Adriane Pollard, environmental services manager for Saanich.

A Saanich home was reduced to rubble Tuesday after efforts to clean up a heating-oil spill failed, making demolition the only option.

The spill this year resulted from a misdelivery by an oil company, which means that - unlike most of the increasing number of home oil-tank and pipe failures in Greater Victoria - the homeowner won't be on the hook for the $750,000 cost of demolition and rebuilding.

That cost will be picked up by the oil delivery company's insurer, said David Rogers, founder of B.C. Hazmat Management.

A few weeks ago the Vancouver Sun ran a couple articles on oil tanks and even provided a few horror stories about experiences that certain home owners have had. Many people in the industry scoffed at the idea, and a local broker function, I heard the words, “the oil tank problem is pretty much cleared up in Vancouver now.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are still thousands of oil tanks out there in the ground, and oftentimes even the owner of the home doesn’t know it is there!

WHY ARE OIL TANKS IN THE GROUND IN THE FIRST PLACE?

‘Greater Vancouver tends to lead the other markets and that’s what we’re now seeing,’ says Carol Frketich, CMHC's regional economist for B.C. ‘In 2010, it will spread to the rest of the province. This will prompt builders to start more homes to meet a growing need for housing.’

VANCOUVER — A tight housing resale market is good news for B.C.’s new residential construction sector in 2010, according to a report released Monday by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

The owner of a home in the Glanford area of Saanich says his life has become a "nightmare" because of a heating-oil leak that could contaminate the Colquitz River system.

An underground line connected to the oil tank is protected by concrete, but somehow it broke, said the owner, who did not want to be named.

At least 1,000 litres of oil permeated the soil in the Kenneth Street area. The contamination has been a "a slow-moving disaster," but various agencies are working hard to contain it, Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard said.

A North Shore woman is suing the former owners of a home in West Vancouver after she shelled out more than $160,000 to remove 5,000 litres of contaminated fuel from a leaky home-heating oil tank buried in her backyard.

Susan Aldred says she discovered the tank when she decided to sell her home on Mathers Avenue in February. She wonders how many other homeowners are similarly unaware of such a problem. The tank had not been used for about 25 years and was buried up against the house on a steep slope with flowing underground water.