‘I Felt Like It Was My Fault’

By Jessica Willis, The Berkshire Eagle, Pittsfield, Mass.

Aug. 5–BECKET — Her story is the stuff of nightmares: Alone in her rambling farmhouse on a cold morning last October, Alberta Mahoney, 81, nearly blind, wanted to shake the chill. She groped for the thermostat and turned the dial to 70 degrees. And nothing happened. No heat.

“So I turned the thermostat all the way up,” Mahoney said. “Still nothing. Which didn’t make sense.”

She had plenty of oil. About two weeks earlier, Brown Oil Co., her Dalton-based supplier, had filled her tank with 250 gallons of kerosene.

The oil tank on the 162-year-old farmhouse was outside, in the adjoining garage. When a technician from Brown visited the property and banged on the tank, it made a hollow sound.

Empty.

All 250 gallons of kerosene had leaked out of the tank, through the wooden floorboards, and, as Mahoney would discover later, into the shallow Becket bedrock below, where it sluiced into her septic tank.

The fire department came. The next day, men from the Environmental Protection Agency investigated the scene and told her the kerosene had gotten into her well.

“I knew that already,” Mahoney said. “I made a cup of tea, and I could taste the kerosene (in my water).”

The worst news, however, was delivered by Jack Mahoney, her 84-year-old brother, the owner of the farmhouse. He told his sister that the homeowner’s insurance policy did not cover residential heating-fuel spills. Out-of-pocket

cleanup costs, which Jack would have to shoulder, would be in the realm of $90,000. So far, Jack has sunk $50,000 into fixing the mess.

“I cried night and day,” Mahoney said. “I felt like it was my fault.”

The scene at the Becket farmhouse was just one of about 250 residential heating oil spills that occur in the state every year, according to Katherine Robertson of the Licensed Site Professional Association.

Because of a little-known exclusion clause in homeowner insurance polices, the spills are not covered.

“One homeowner (with an oil spill) on Cape Cod told me he was ‘putting his child’s tuition into a hole in the ground,’ ” Robertson said.

Oil is treated as a hazardous material, and under Massachusetts law, all heating oil leaks and spills must be reported, assessed, and remediated by a site professional responsible to the Department of Environmental Protection, she added.

Robertson said most heating oil cleanups cost about $90,000, but she recalled one such spill that cost the homeowner $250,000.

The spills are “horror stories,” Robertson said. “And they’re not rare.”

State legislation was working to enact a bill that would end the homeowner’s insurance exclusion, and although it passed unanimously in the Senate, the bill was failed by the House of Representatives last week.

The bill may be re-enacted in informal session, but it will die in December if it does not find another legislator to sponsor it, Robertson said.

Senate Bill 2404′s former sponsor, State Sen. Pam Resor, D-Middlesex and Worcester, is not seeking re-election.

Robertson was disappointed that the bill failed in formal session, and she said the insurance exclusion was a sensitive one with site professionals.

“It’s tough for (them) to work on these sites,” she said. “The reason why we got involved with this bill is because it puts us in a bad situation. People are spending their retirement funds and annuities to clean up these spills.”

For the time being, a charcoal filter has been placed in Mahoney’s water supply, and although the water out of the tap is fine, Mahoney still isn’t drinking the water, according to the licensed site professional who working on the assessment and cleanup.

“Kerosene can still get through the bedrock fractures,” said Paul Beaulieu of Tighe and Bond, an engineering firm and site assessment group based in Westfield. “At this point, (the water supply) is all we’re keeping an eye on. (The Mahoneys) have spent a lot of money on us.”

Beaulieu said the septic system probably will need to be excavated, to the tune of $60,000.

The lesson to be learned in all of this?

“An ounce of prevention is worth a thousand pounds of cure,” Beaulieu said. “People should be checking their oil systems and replacing their old oil tanks. It’s the price you pay for a good night’s sleep.”

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