Do I Need an Environmental Consultant?
Before starting our project, we will inform you if your city requires an environmental consultant from the initial phase. There are other important contributing factors that you must consider when determining whether you need an environmental consultant or not:
- Does your bank, mortgage, lender, or insurance company require an environmental consultant to oversee the project?
- Has the buyer of your property included that an environmental consultants assessment/ report is required as part your final subjects for sale?
- Is your property designated as a commercial property?
- Are you thinking of pursuing legal action in regards to your tank removal?
Regardless if your city does not require hiring a consultant, we still always highly recommend that you consider engaging one. After all, the main reason to extract an oil tank is to remove the risk of contamination from your property and to prove that property is clear of any environmental issues.
Why Should I Use an Environmental Consultant?
The best-equipped and trained person to prove and document that a property is unequivocally free from contamination is an environmental consultant. This is why over the past 10 years many cities have adjusted their regulations to make it mandatory to hire a consultant from the beginning of the project. The differences between an environmental consultant taking samples and a tank company are important to understand:
- Tank companies can take samples, submit them to the laboratory for testing, decipher the analytical data and send them to the city upon completion of the job. However, in the end they do not supply a full environmental report to the city.
- Although we have never missed any contamination, environmental consultants should have insurance to protect the home owner from any future issues should they arise.
- Environmental consultants specialize in sample taking, and reporting.
- If you hire an independent consultant to take your samples are eliminating conflict of interest. Although we are reputable and honest company, there are some companies that may take advantage of their client’s lack of knowledge.
How to Choose an Environmental Consultant?
We recognize that most clients have not worked with an environmental consultant before, and that is why during our initial tank quote we supply a list of consultants. If you would like to check out our list of consultants that we have worked with in the past, please go to the Links heading on our website and navigate to the “Environmental Consultant?” section. We are happy to work with any consultant, as long as they are certified to take samples and prepare and sumbit all appropriate documentation to meet the requirements of the governing bodies, for example: local city hall, fire hall and Ministry of Environment. If you select an environmental consultant that is not on our list, we have a few tips on choosing the right one:
- Confirm that they are fully insured.
- Confirm that they have worked on oil tank projects before and that they will file all appropriate documentation to the necessary governing bodies.
- We recommend that they charge a flat rate for your project, as it can get expensive if it is billed by the hour. In some cases like commercial jobs, it may be beneficial to be charged by the hour; however, in most residential tank removals it is not usually necessary.
- We believe that it is always important in any industry to do background check, for example: BBB, Google etc.