COLSON ENVIRONMENTAL

A MAJOR DISASTER! I have waited one year before posting this review in hopes that the outcome by now would have been different. It has not changed since the original incident occurred so I am sharing this factual review with other in hopes of sparing them the financial loss I am incurring and the environmental damage caused by the Hackettstown Oil employee. I scheduled a delivery to fill my tank for what was expected to be my final oil delivery as I was in the process of converting from oil to natural gas heat. As part of that process I had an appt with the Region Oil rep (my previous oil provider for 34 yrs) to visit my property on 2/11/19 to view the current furnace and take measurements and photos of the areas impacted by the future installation of gas line/pipes including the location of the furnace and the neighboring storage room where the indoor fuel take was located. Note: I had let my Region service contract expire a few months prior to this incident b/c of the expectation of converting in a timely matter. So I used Hack'n in order to save $ on a short term situation. I did not realize at the time that Region also had a discount delivery thru COD oil. I used them subsequently until the conversion was completed. The following night 2/12/19 we experienced an ice storm which coated the ground with 1/4" of ice. In preparation for this storm I had gone into the fuel tank storage rm where I store bird see in a trash can beside the fuel tank.and filled my numerous feeders before the storm arrived. The following afternoon at approx. 4 pm the Hackettstown Oil deliveryman arrived. I went out the front door and spoke to him directing him to where the tank was, and cautioning him about the very icey, steep, driveway. So he KNEW I was home. Three hours later, at 7:00 pm I opened by back door to let out some dogs and was immediately struck by the unmistakable odor of fuel oil!! I threw on my boots and coat, got a flashlight as it was now dark, and hurried as quickly as was possible on the ice coated deck, down to the area underneath where the storage room was. Immediately I saw that there was oil coating the ice below the fill pipes protruding from the wall of the storage room. Shockingly the oil coated-ice though had been chopped up and mixed with the soil beneath the ice in an area of 1 ft x 2 ft.!! I then opened the storage room door and discovered the fuel tank had a 2 ft wide stream of oil sliding down the entire width of the tank that had burst from under both the side-by-side fuel gauge apparatus and the 3" bolt/nut that covered the pump-out hole on the top of the tank. The spill followed the curve of the tank down to the underside soaking a stack of shake shingles I stored there for future repairs. Of course it would have also streamed down the back-side of the tank in the same manner but that side was up against the wall so I could not view it. I was shocked to discover this and that despite the delivery man having spoken with me and he knew I was home he never stopped to alert me of this over-fill and potential disaster to my property. I then returned inside and called the Hackettstown oil office but of course it was after 7:00 and they were closed so my message explaining this emergency just went to voicemail Of course I naively assumed they check their messages... The next morning at 7:00 am I received a call from them saying they were sending over a third-party to "clean-up the spill. As promised in 20 minutes a man arrived and indeed he "cleaned up the spill" on the tank!!! and put down some absorbent pads then made a call to ? and provided me with a telephone # of a remediation company. Needless to say when I looked up the company he provide he neglected to say it was owned by the same owners as Hackettstown Oil, i.e. the Colson brothers. I chose to instead call my previous oil provider, Christy Halsey/Region Oil who 24 hrs after the oil spilled occurred and they received my panicked call, three trucks arrived to assess the situation and transfer the oil into a new "temporary" tank. Thirty minutes late,r the Remediation company they use, CARE Environmental, arrived and for the next four hours they men began the basic steps to soak up the spilled oil and stop further damage. Once especially interesting point to note, is that despite it being 24 hours after the initial over-fill occurred, and I was still using the fuel to heat my house, the remediation teams called me out to see that the fuel tank was still so over full, that when they took off the top bolt/nut to transfer the oil into the new tank it was still visible at the hole opening. Contrary to Hackettstown Oil's insurer, a Nationwide agency in Indiana, who is offering to pay me only 40% restitution as THEY CLAIM MY tank LEAKED the oil into the storage room and site ten pinholes that were discovered when the tank was removed and cut up. However the remediation team told me those pinholes were caused by the over-pressurization of the totally full tank. And they showed me that the fuel oil was still sitting in the outside fill pipes 24 hours after the fill-up had occurred. they said a "fill-up" NEVER is supposed to totally FILL a tank due to the high pressure that is caused in the tack. They returned the next day or two to complete the clean-up and seal-off all the hazardous waste - as that was what it all was that included the contaminate soil, items in my storage room that were coated with oil, the supplies used to soak up the oil etc. Numerous soil samples and borings though the storage room cement floor had to be Lab. tested and once the remediated ground was approved fresh soil had to be added to replace the removed amounts that were contaminated. Needless to say the cost to me was enormous, $8805.85! My entire budget for the gas conversion had to be used to instead pay for the instant expenses of remidiating the property. This included $1000 the first night and two installments spread over the next day and then after the completion, $750 for the new tank, and a fee to NJ DEP, $400. To date, nearly 13 months later I have not received one penny of restitution neither an apology, in fact not one word from the Hackettstown Oil company. On so many levels they are to be avoided as they are totally unprofessional and this "expense" of $8800+ is a drop in the bucket compared to the damage the negative publicity will cost them. So DO NOT under any circumstances use this company, and by association, I would add the same to their Colson environmental company. They obviously don't care about the environment and it's protection!!!