Belmont elementary school oil tank leak

Newton's rings on a clay pit pond noticed by a high school student; traced to corroded number-6 bunker oil heating pipes at an elementary school a third of a mile uphill. $1.5 million repair. Tom's hometown.

Do you know how they transported the oil from Titusville down to Oil City back around 1900? Just floated it on the river. Just poured it out on the river, and they had a little weir at the other end and skimmed it off the water. The rules have changed over 100 years. Now if they see Newton's rings out there — that's what happened in my town. There's an old clay pit pond in front of the high school, and some high school student noticed Newton's rings on the water and started investigating. The elementary school up on the hill, about a third of a mile above it, had a corrosion problem in some of the pipes for the number 6 bunker oil they burned to heat the school. That cost the town $1.5 million to repair. In the old days, you just skim it off the water.

Contrast case to Pennzoil — same hazard class (heating oil leak) under modern environmental regulation cost the town of Belmont two million dollars in cleanup. Used to make the point that the rules have changed since 1900.

Today, here's a picture of an oil slick. In my town of Belmont, about fifteen years ago they had an oil leak from one of the oil tanks at one of the elementary schools. A high school student looks at Clay Pit Pond and sees an oil slick on the surface — it cost the town two million dollars for environmental cleanup. Oil City back in 1900 wouldn't have had a problem. They would have loved to have seen water that clean. The rules have changed. The mining sites, slag sludge ponds — that was perfectly legal when they did it. Now we change the law on these companies and say, oh, that wasn't a good idea, we're going to make you pay for it. Some of these companies go bankrupt because of that. In fact, most of the steel companies in the United States did go bankrupt. U.S. Steel is the only one who's really been able to survive, because of legacy cleanup costs.