Messy and expensive to clean up
We keep warm (in this house) with some of the cheapest electricity on the continent. Next time around, in a different place, we’ll need a different game plan. After some analysis, the one thing that has been decided is that the new house will not be heated with oil. For all of the usual reasons (think peak oil consequences) and a heightened sense of environmental responsibility.
The local news broadcast, this evening, gave me another good reason: the cost of cleaning up after an accidental fuel oil spill. A small school, downtown, had a delivery last month that went wrong. Although the blame hasn’t been laid, 7500 litres of mazout went into the fill pipe and out onto the ground. All together now… OOPS!!!
The requirements, under environmental law, are simple. The school board must hire a decontamination firm and recover that loss. Two scenarios have been proposed, and will be voted upon at the next meeting. Either the school building gets “jacked up” to allow the removal of the soil, or the building is demolished (before decontamination). Plan A = $3 million and Plan B = $1 million (plus a replacement school).
This isn’t a large school, (91 students and 15 staff members), but it will sit in the record books as one of the most expensive repair jobs in recent times, at least in the educational sector.
Nope. No way, no how. Forget the furnace and big metal tank for the next domicile. Too expensive, in every way.
Whatever the original extraction cost per litre for petroleum products, the second time around it’s a lot pricier.
