The two Saanich neighbours are struggling with the crushing costs of cleaning up a heating-oil tank leak, and one is suing the other, but Gina Dolinsky and Gavin Edwards still chat over the fence that separates their yards.
Edwards, who retired to Vancouver Island from Alberta last year, has spent more than $60,000 cleaning up oil leaking from an old tank he did not know was buried in the backyard of his home on Adelaide Avenue.
He expects more bills from the province and Saanich, which has warned he will be charged for cleanup costs from February last year, even though he did not move in until August.
“It’s insane,” said Edwards had a Victoria company scan the yard for buried tanks before he bought the house. The company found nothing.
“It’s almost like a reverse of the legal process: you are guilty until you can prove you’re innocent,” said Edwards, who is representing himself in Dolinsky’s lawsuit against him and the house’s previous owners. He is considering his own lawsuit, but cannot afford legal help.
“I don’t know who the heck can afford something like this. I’m not going to get my money back, but I hope, from my experience, no one else has to go through this.”
Despite massive remediation, there is still contamination that will put his home on the provincial contaminated sites list, Edwards said. Even if he declares bankruptcy, it would be difficult to sell the house, he said.
Like most Greater Victoria homeowners, Edwards and Dolinsky are not insured for oil spills on site or for huge cleanup costs once the oil goes off the property.
Saanich still has a trap outside Dolinsky’s house to prevent more oil from running down ditches and into the Gorge if it resumes flowing from the drain tile when it rains.
Dolinsky, a single mother, has spent more than $30,000 on the cleanup. “It has kind of tapped me out,” she said.
The saga started early last year when oil started flowing from her drains. Inspections proved that her oil tank was intact and it was assumed, initially, the oil had come from a home up the street, where oil was mistakenly delivered to a disconnected tank.
That house had to be demolished.
In December, the oil leak started again and the province stepped in to trace the source. It found the oil came from the buried tank in Edwards’ yard and B.C.’s polluter- pays rules clicked in.
“We still have some level of oil around here and I can’t pay anymore. I need to find out who is going to pay for this before I finish the cleanup,” Dolinsky said.
“I’m having to sue to get the money back. It’s the only recourse.”
Edwards’ house was converted to electric heat in 1982 and the then-owner says the tank was drained, Edwards said. That owner rented out the house for several years. It was then bought by someone who kept it for 10 years. It was sold again in early 2012 and those buyers did a quick flip and sold to Edwards.
