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Avoid Horrors this Hallowe'en... Check your Tank!
31st October 2008
Check your oil tank or risk damaging your local environment, is the warning from the Environment Agency today to oil heating customers.
As part of the Environment Agency's six week campaign, oil tank owners are being reminded of the importance of protecting the environment by ensuring oil tanks are well maintained and secured.
Richard Bowen, Environment Manger, said, "Oil is one of the most common causes of water pollution and even the smallest oil leak can have a massive impact on the surrounding wildlife, including birds, fish and plants.
"Just two litres of oil could seriously pollute the volume of fresh water needed to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool."
There are a number of ways tank owners can protect the environment by ensuring a single skin tank is not positioned within 10 metres of a stream or river, or 50 metres of a borehole, well or spring. Also, where possible, tanks should be positioned away from areas prone to flooding, suggests the agency.
And of course, the single most effective way to prevent a spillage is to use a Bunded Tank. Unlike old fashioned Single Skin Tanks, Bunded Tanks consist of a 'tank within a tank'. The inner tank acts as the primary storage vessel, whilst the outer tank acts as a failsafe in the event of a spillage - safely and securing spilt fuel until it can be returned to the inner tank.
Consumers can also help minimise the risk of spillages during fuel deliveries, by asking chosing a tank fitted with a failsafe overfill prevention system (e.g. LRC) and purchasing fuel only from suppliers whose tankers are equipped with the necessary technology to prevent their drivers overfilling their customers tanks.
Such systems are a modern, low cost, alternative to non-failsafe devices such as mechanical overfill prevention valves - sometimes and cruelly referred to by some people as 'Buncefield Valves', which worryingly have the potential to cause the very event they're designed to prevent. In the absence of a failsafe 'truck to tank' delivery system, drivers are perhaps only one distraction away from a spilage.
The Environment Agency also recommends that oil heating customers should ensure their tank is placed on a surface resistant to the oil being stored and is isolated from any surface water drainage systems. This will reduce the risk of spilt oil contaminating the soil and groundwater directly below the tank and beyond.
Richard added: "We hope that everyone with an oil tank has a plan in place to minimise the risk of oil pollution.
"We would encourage anyone who has any concerns over their own oil tank to email the Environment Agency at ac-oilcampaign@environment-agency.gov.uk or if you have an oil spill, call the 24 hour emergency hotline on 0800 807 060."