Motor Oil Drain Intervals
- Thread starter Mike_dup1
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blah that is blown out of perportion. an agrucultural expert friend of mine who works for the government says that used motor oil decomposes if you spill it on the ground, and turns into fertilizer. he does this is his own yard and has run tests to see if there is any pollutant in the ground water, as he uses a well, and has not found anything.
Drinking motor oil contaminated dinking water will do that to you.quote:
Originally posted by GSV:
Your friend is nuts!
I would hate to see what that agrucultural expert uses to kill weeds. So please don't ask.
I am sure all of you have seen patches of dead vegetation from oil spills. Yes oil does eventually degrade, but kills stuff in the mean time. It can contaminate the ground water, but I don't hear about such problems too much. The responsible thing is as Mike said return it to somebody that collects used oil to recycle, burn, or other safe disposal. Find out the rules on mixing different fluids where you take it, and follow them. I find milk jugs to be flimsy and develop leaks. I use empty detergent bottles.
there are natural bacteria that do eventually break down petrols. They can be used to spray over oil spills to degrade them, but that really is nuts to pour it in your yard. Especially if you have your own well. There's an area around Kelly AFB in San Antonio that is having a problem remediating petrol spill in their water. I used to work with a professor that isolated these bacterias that eat oil.
The person that dumps petro oil down the drain will also dump Amsoil down the drain after the 25,000 mile oil change
47HO,good point but it is still dumping.
Around here its easy to dispose of used oil. You just go to the county solid waste transfer station and dump it into the collection tank. No charge.
A friend has a service/gas station and he was telling me that a guy came it with a 5 gallon gas can and wanted to dump some drain oil. He would not take because the guy never has his oil changed there nor does he buy any oil and rarely gas. So the guy said, I have to go home and empty this 'cause I need gas for my snow blower. A few minutes after we thought the guy left he comes into the office to pay for some gas and my friend asked him. What did you do with the oil? He said, oh I dumped it down the drain over there, pointing the a street storm drain. But he also left a trail of oil back to the gas pumps and washed out his can, dumping some gas in the driveway. My friend was really upset with this idiot, he has 5 ground water monitoring wells on his property as part of the state regulations of gas stations etc. Costs him $1000/year for the testing and this clown just dumps oil/gas on his property putting him in danger of being in violation of state laws. Any hint of ground contamination and his a$$ in the the dog house. Last time they discovered contaminated soil on his property, it cost him $25,000 to have it removed and disposed of + additional testing and was in the doghouse with the state for 5 yrs.
While Joe Blow may see nothing wrong with dumping the oil, someone takes it very seriously and if they happen to catch you in the act, it will cost you some $$ in Michigan.
[ December 30, 2003, 02:02 PM: Message edited by: Mike ]
A friend has a service/gas station and he was telling me that a guy came it with a 5 gallon gas can and wanted to dump some drain oil. He would not take because the guy never has his oil changed there nor does he buy any oil and rarely gas. So the guy said, I have to go home and empty this 'cause I need gas for my snow blower. A few minutes after we thought the guy left he comes into the office to pay for some gas and my friend asked him. What did you do with the oil? He said, oh I dumped it down the drain over there, pointing the a street storm drain. But he also left a trail of oil back to the gas pumps and washed out his can, dumping some gas in the driveway. My friend was really upset with this idiot, he has 5 ground water monitoring wells on his property as part of the state regulations of gas stations etc. Costs him $1000/year for the testing and this clown just dumps oil/gas on his property putting him in danger of being in violation of state laws. Any hint of ground contamination and his a$$ in the the dog house. Last time they discovered contaminated soil on his property, it cost him $25,000 to have it removed and disposed of + additional testing and was in the doghouse with the state for 5 yrs.
While Joe Blow may see nothing wrong with dumping the oil, someone takes it very seriously and if they happen to catch you in the act, it will cost you some $$ in Michigan.
[ December 30, 2003, 02:02 PM: Message edited by: Mike ]
Patman
Staff member
He should have taken down that guy's licence plate number (or name if he got it from any credit card purchase) and reported him right away, that way he couldn't get into trouble later on.
Not as easy as that. The property owner is help responsible for these kinds of things.
I know of someone that ran afoul of the Dept of Environmental Quality (DEQ). This person had a long gravel driveway (100 Meters) leading to a state highway. Well apparently for years he had been dumping his used oil onto the gravel to compact it and control dust etc. One day he was dumping some near the highway when a state highway engineer happened to be nearby inspecting culverts. That engineer called in the DEQ who took soil samples. They then took legal action against the property owner to have the contaminated soil removed from state ROW and his property, had it hauled to a special disposal site. My info said it cost the property owner around $20,000 to restore that land. They also (DEQ) installed monitoring wells downstream of his property (he paid for in the 20g) as it was in the flood plain for a stream tributary to Lake Superior. Reason I know of this is because I was a Surveyor for the DOT (retired now) and we were told to keep a eye out for this sort of thing. If it was done to our ROW, our agency could be held liable for the cleanup, as had happened all to often. We found people running their sewers into highway ditch's, dumping trash along the roads and you name, we found it and it cost us highway $$ to clean up. Since we were a state agency we were obligated to correct this no matter the cost, set an expamle. We had one person who had installed an underground fuel tank within the ROW many years ago. Well, it has become a goal of the DEQ to find all these sites and remove them at the property owners expense. That one site cost our agency over 1/4 million $$ to clean up. The person who did it, fled the state when it was discovered he messed with wetlands on this 300 acres of land. He lost everything (was a big contractor) when he was convicted.
btw-This guy is rumored to be living in Flordia now?
[ December 31, 2003, 09:03 AM: Message edited by: Mike ]
I know of someone that ran afoul of the Dept of Environmental Quality (DEQ). This person had a long gravel driveway (100 Meters) leading to a state highway. Well apparently for years he had been dumping his used oil onto the gravel to compact it and control dust etc. One day he was dumping some near the highway when a state highway engineer happened to be nearby inspecting culverts. That engineer called in the DEQ who took soil samples. They then took legal action against the property owner to have the contaminated soil removed from state ROW and his property, had it hauled to a special disposal site. My info said it cost the property owner around $20,000 to restore that land. They also (DEQ) installed monitoring wells downstream of his property (he paid for in the 20g) as it was in the flood plain for a stream tributary to Lake Superior. Reason I know of this is because I was a Surveyor for the DOT (retired now) and we were told to keep a eye out for this sort of thing. If it was done to our ROW, our agency could be held liable for the cleanup, as had happened all to often. We found people running their sewers into highway ditch's, dumping trash along the roads and you name, we found it and it cost us highway $$ to clean up. Since we were a state agency we were obligated to correct this no matter the cost, set an expamle. We had one person who had installed an underground fuel tank within the ROW many years ago. Well, it has become a goal of the DEQ to find all these sites and remove them at the property owners expense. That one site cost our agency over 1/4 million $$ to clean up. The person who did it, fled the state when it was discovered he messed with wetlands on this 300 acres of land. He lost everything (was a big contractor) when he was convicted.
btw-This guy is rumored to be living in Flordia now?
[ December 31, 2003, 09:03 AM: Message edited by: Mike ]
Are you an owner of a Mechanic shop
in the Houston area?
I know of a man that has a shop here that did likewise know of a bacteria guy... anyhow he used them to keep his shop floor almost spotless, and almost slip proof.... they mopped every night with the stuff and throught the day. I think the bacteria are a cool way to handle the problem on an individual level... @ At home... at least for spills.
These bacteria are actually self-selecting in nature. Basically, during a spill, the only bacteria that are left in an area are the ones who can break down ("eat") the spill. Scienctists go to spill areas to collect these bacteria. In many instances, these bacteria can break down undesirable materials into more desirable materials. Nature is amazing......
However, the bacteria cannot break down everything before it becomes a plume and migrates into the water table. Depending on the amount of ground water and the nature of the spill (i.e. MTBE versus xylene, etc.) the plume can travel miles within a relatively short time. So, materials dumped on your property, don't always stay there.....
Don't be stupid.....despose of everything
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