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By RICHARD PEARSALL
Courier-Post Staff
PENNSAUKEN
Elaine and Bill Hansell own a well-groomed, two-story colonial here, not an old factory or abandoned landfill.
But the Hansells find themselves mired in what seems like an industrial-sized environmental mess nonetheless.
"I'm stressed out up to my head," Elaine, 73, said last week as she cleared the furniture out of her family room.
The Hansells recently discovered an underground storage tank had leaked heating oil into the ground next to their house.
Follow-up drilling in their family room this week proved negative for oil beneath the house, a major relief.
But the Hansells still face a cleanup outside that is likely to cost them several thousand dollars by the time the contaminated soil is removed and replaced with clean fill.
And they have insurance.
Among the latest to discover a problem with their underground oil tank, the Hansells will not be the last.
There are an estimated 240,000 residential underground oil tanks in the state, according to the New Jersey Fuel Merchants Association.
And while the association contends the chance of discovering one leaking is relatively small -- "less than 1 percent of all underground tanks nationwide ever experience a release," the association says on its Web site -- others beg to differ.
Bob Lentine, an official with the Camden County Department of Health and Human Services, believes with older tanks the percentage is much higher.
"We look at about 1,000 of them in a year," Lentine said of the underground tanks. "Roughly 60 percent of them are leakers."
The state Department of Environmental Protection is monitoring close to 4,000 cleanups of oil leaking from residential tanks.
"We think people should be made aware of the problem," Elaine Hansell said this week.
Her own development, Chadwick, was built in the 1970s, with underground oil tanks installed under some but not all of the homes, township Administrator Bob Cummings said.
The DEP requires homeowners to notify it if they discover an oil leak and to remedy the problem to protect the underlying groundwater.
Homeowners can, in practice, ignore the regulation until it comes time to sell their property.
Then buyers will typically ask to see evidence that there is no leak, or, increasingly, demand that the tank be removed altogether as a precaution.
"We stress to homeowners to try to be proactive, to replace a tank before there is a problem," said Larry Hajna, a DEP spokesman.
The DEP has grant money available for people who face cleanups.
People who earn less than $200,000 a year and have a net worth, excluding their primary residence and pensions, of less than $200,000 are eligible for reimbursement.
Since the inception of the program in 1998, the state has given $35 million to businesses for cleanups and $15 million to residential property owners.
Last year, the state awarded grants totaling $2 million to 23 businesses and $2.8 million to 186 residences.
The latter figure works out to about $15,000 per homeowner helped.
The department also recently began a program to reimburse homeowners who replace their underground tanks as a precautionary measure.
Last year, the state awarded $28,400 to 12 residences for nonleaking tanks.
The good news for the Hansells is they have insurance.
The bad news is their policy, actually a service agreement with their fuel oil company, Petro, has a $4,000 deductible.
The company has already billed them the full amount of the deductible, plus a $250 fee to monitor the removal of their old tank by another company (which cost them an additional $2,600).
Because they have insurance, they are probably not eligible for reimbursement of the deductible, said Wayne Howitz, an administrator in the DEP's division of site remediation.
Homeowners with oil-leak problems are encouraged to join what the DEP calls its "voluntary compliance plan," a program of monitoring that will cost the homeowner a fee of $500, but will conclude with a letter from the DEP certifying the problem has been taken care of and "no further action" is required.
"That letter is worth its weight in platinum," Lentine said.
Because they live in Camden County, the Hansells should be able to get their letter for just $75.
Camden County is one of three counties participating in a pilot program under which county health departments are monitoring the residential storage tank problems for the DEP. The other counties are Bergen and Hudson.
Reach Richard Pearsall at (856) 486-2465 or rpearsall@courierpostonline.com
Published: January 31. 2007 3:10AM
Date Created:
1/31/2007
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