For those with experience working on fuel-oil loss files, it’s a familiar beginning: a leak of an unknown amount of fuel from a tank at a property. Often the insured doesn’t understand the magnitude of the loss and sometimes thinks that contractor crews will mop up the spilled fuel, replace some flooring, and be done by the weekend. In other cases, contractor crews are immediately mobilized, and significant amounts of money are spent without any clear objective or process to follow. In extreme cases, these types of losses end up in the courts where everyone involved are pointing fingers. With experiences like these, there is no wonder why many people who are involved in fuel oil losses have a bad taste in their mouth from the beginning.

Implementing a sound framework and protocol based on good science, and experience with numerous losses can provide a common ground for all those involved to understand the process and have confidence that the best path forward is being implemented by the project team. There needs to be a method to the madness!

At the onset of a loss, there is often limited information to work with other than the fuel supplier or project owner providing a rough estimate of the volume of fuel that was lost. Fuel oil losses require a significant amount of work and money to understand or characterize the extent of impacts to the environment and to determine the best scope of work to successfully address the loss. The required scope of work can sometimes be quite substantial.

Just because these types of losses are often complex and can require significant budgets to resolve, it doesn’t mean than the initial response, investigation and remediation implementation have to be equally chaotic.

Preserving evidence
Once on site, the qualified consultant must answer several questions and collect key points of evidence that will be critical for the successful resolution of the loss. Some of these are listed below:

• How did the loss occur?
• Who is responsible?
• What was released?
• How much was released?
• Where did the fuel go?
• What are the limits of the fuel impacts?
• What can be done to address the release?

Those experienced in responding to fuel losses understand the need to preserve evidence and the need to use the appropriate forensic specialists to identify potential causes and parties responsible for the loss. This requires documenting the conditions of the tank set up, reviewing inspection records, preserving the tank, the fuel distribution lines, and any additional information that is critical to the loss.

Your environmental consultant should collect samples of the fuel that was released, so it can be analyzed to confirm the chemical characteristics of the fuel source. This information can only be collected at the beginning of the loss. Such information may be critical in answering questions later in the file if potential unrelated environmental contaminants are encountered at the site. Without these initial fuel samples, it can be very difficult to differentiate different sources of contamination and to resolve any conflicts that may arise once the remediation progresses.

Mitigate the loss
What can be done to remediate accessible fuel oil impacts before they migrate below the building or into a waterway—situations that are much more difficult and costly to remove?

We know that many environmental consultants and insurance professionals state that the first step in addressing a fuel oil loss is to determine the full extent of fuel in the subsurface soil and groundwater. While we agree that this is a critical step in the overall response, we first ask a simple question: Is there anything we can do to recover the released fuel as soon as possible so further migration and impact does not occur?

Often, approving a modest budget to address spill mitigation and control is a critical first step in achieving true project success. If some timely excavation and removal of liquid contaminants (fuel and water) can recover half (or all) of the released fuel, the overall costs required to resolve the loss may be significantly reduced. An extensive environmental investigation to delineate impacts at the onset of the loss could take weeks to months to complete. While waiting for results, fuel continues to impact the property. This delay in action could cost the project tens of thousands of dollars in additional remediation efforts that may not have been required if an attempt to address the impacts were implemented at the beginning of the loss.

To be continued in Part II

Christian Tenaglia, M.Env.Sc., P.Eng., QPESA, EP, is the Regional Manager of Pinchin’s Northern Ontario Region, and is based in Sault Ste. Marie. Neil Butler, B.Sc. (Env.), is Director of Insurance Services, Environmental Due Diligence and Remediation, and is based in Mississauga.