What of these do you not consider to be toxic waste?
[ul]
[li]Gasoline[/li][li]Oil[/li][li]Brake fluid[/li][li]Transmission fluid[/li][/ul]
If the house was built before the mid 70’s then all the ground surrounding it is probably got lead in it. I’d be more worried about the ground sinking as it rusts out and collapses. If the house has a well that might be a consideration.
unless the water table is 2 inches below the ground all that stuff is heading south. Bad for wells, non-existent to everything above. Also, I’m guessing the car sat around for decades in a disassembled state so there won’t be gasoline or radiator fluid left. It was probably an empty hull with an axle.
I’m unclear as to why allowing the above into the water table at any height in a populated area is a good thing. Regardless, are you saying that they will leave no soil contamination at all? That they will simply seep away?
The more I think about it I question the validity of the idea it was buried. Unless it was driven into a pond that was filled in nobody is going to dig a hole big enough for a car and bury it when it is easier to tow it to a scrap yard.
Possibly so. Any good reason the OP shouldn’t still be concerned and shouldn’t follow up on that concern? After all, he already has evidence in the way of (undefined) auto parts being retrieved from a burn pile. Were it me, I’d sure want to investigate further.
When I was a kid the local garbage company dumped trash in a pit on land owned by the developer. Years later he built houses on it. Even as a kid I shook my head knowing the ground would sink. It did. Can’t even imagine what chemicals are seeping down into ground. It’s not the homeowner’s problem if it seeps down, it’s everybody with a well.
This brings up any legal considerations of contamination that could be transferred with title but I’m not a lawyer.
In retrospect I agree. I’d be asking for more detail from the neighbors. He may have been dumping everything on the ground. God knows what the city/county would require if it’s tested and they demand it be cleaned up. It’s a sleeping dog that could cost a lot of money if disturbed.
It’s one thing if it’s just a car. But car parts in a burn pile, buried asbestos shingles, etc., is evidence of a pattern of abuse of the property. It might not add up to a toxic waste dump, but it’s certainly a risk.
Regardless of whether that bothers you or not, this property is not worth what you’ve agreed to pay for it, assuming you’re paying fair market value for what you thought was a clean property. If you really want to buy it, insist on having it evaluated by an environmental professional, at the seller’s expense. Then re-nogotiate the price based on the findings.
Absolutely agreed. It may, in fact, be nothing. Before I bought the property I’d want to be pretty sure of that.
I sell commerical real estate for a living and have dealt with many contaminated sites. You did not say how long the neighbor said it had been buried. In practical terms a car buried for over half a century is unlikely to present much of an active environmental hazard. Fluids and solvents will (in most cases) have long since degraded to less volatile and dangerous components. If the burial took place much more recently that equation could change substantially.
Having said this I would blow out of this deal as fast as humanly possible. The main risk for you is not the current operational danger of the buried car, but the legal impact of the fact that a car is buried onsite, and if you decide to close on the property knowing this, at whatever future point you, or your heirs, try to sell the property this will be a huge impediment to transferring it, and will likely impact value as well.
Digging it up and certifying the burial site as clean is going to be a hell of an expensive proposition and will be far more time consuming than you think. All this assumes that it is unlikely to come back as actively contaminated. If it does a whole new can of worms is opened.
A car buried in the backyard is a legal nuke. Run away and get your deposit back if you cannot be guaranteed there is no car.
My last post assumed an intact gas tank and crankcase and transmission. If it’s just body parts that’s much less of a hazard. Even so, if there are buried parts throughout the property it could still present a liability nightmare in the future.
IMO pre- occupancy is hazardous on both sides of the buyer-seller equation. This scenario is perfect illustration of why that is. I always tell my sellers not to agree to it.
I think you need real lawyering fast, and on the basis of just a little info think I’d cancel or postpone the sale if you couldn’t get legal advice fast enough.
It doesn’t take much to cause an expensive groundwater pollution problem, and there is much uncertainty to deal with too. I do think, though, that asbestos buried there isn’t scary, as asbestos occurs naturally underground in the first place - that’s where it all comes from. Asbestos is bad because we dig it up. But that’s just my thought, you should get professional advice on all counts.
You should find internet sites that sell old aerial photos and see for yourself what the place looked like in past years, to help clarify the size of the possible problem.
Finally, I worked on some gasoline remediation sites about 15 or 20 years ago and was amazed to learn that Maryland law, at least then, allowed sellers to knowingly hide underground contamination problems without repercussion. The responsibility goes to the new owners and to others geographically nearby who the courts consider have lots of money available. I was getting advice from lawyers and business people as a participant in a research project, and don’t feel competent about this or understand the details (for example why the law would operate in such a bizarre way by seemingly endorsing fraud), but certainly want to raise a warning.
You sure that wasn’t an old Indian burial ground?
Anybody who would bury a car and car parts, asbestos shingles, etc. is exactly the kind of person who could create their own little hazardous waste dump. These are the kind of people who pour motor oil and antifreeze on the ground, and paint thinner down the sink.
As I mentioned earlier, I actually remediated a little auto body shop. The site did not look particularly contaminated–it just looked at little bit junky. There were several abandoned cars, a bunch of abandoned car batteries, and a buried gasoline tank and a waste oil tank. However, the batteries had all corroded and contaminated the surrounding soil with lead residue. The underground storage tanks had minor leaks which were easily remediated, but we still had to excavate and remove the tanks, then thoroughly test and analyze the soil from the tank graves. The owner had poured paint solvents down his sink drains, which led to his septic tank, which contaminated the surrounding soil with VOCs (volatile organic compounds). (You can only imagine how much fun it is sampling a septic tank and leach field.)
Because of all of the contamination, we ended up having to remove and dispose of over **800 tons of contaminated soil ** from the 1-acre site. Groundwater monitoring wells then had to be installed, and in Connecticut, sampled quarterly for years after remediation.
The last time I checked, cleanup costs had passed the half-million dollar mark. The owner got off scot-free because the purchaser agreed to take on all of the cleanup costs as part of the sale of the property. (The purchaser was a developer who wanted to put in a chain pharmacy store.)
This was not an unusual site–just an old auto body shop owned by someone with poor housekeeping practices.
So anyway, I disagree that a “free car” makes up for all of the potential liability the potential purchaser of the subject property is looking at.
That was my thought. How do you get a car into a hole without digging a ramp (meaning a helluva big hole!). Pushing it in would leave it stuck at an angle with the trunk in the air or something, I doubt he had the winch and frame or heavy equipment to lower it in straight. Dib this guy also own a big shovel, a loader or something? Those old cars were tall; you need a hole more than 10 by 15 by 7 feet deep. Plus ramp…
First thing I’d do is a metal detector survey. Ask the neighbour where abouts the car should be. Maybe he just meant there’s enough parts buried around there to make a whole car. Maybe he’s pulling your leg.
As for the pollution, unless it was an art project, the thing was probably pretty much drained by the time he disposed of it.
Plus - anyone here know any backyard mechanics from the good old days? All the used oil went into a corner of the back yard, or got poured down the storm sewer 
. If it’s a gravel driveway, it’s probably thick oil underneath from leaks. Plus, half the neighbours probably did the same. As I said before, one old car will be the least of the problems.
It was probably that too but when I was a kid it was farm land complete with a couple of ponds. I don’t remember if it was a ravine or an old quarry but I do remember the location. There was a creek that drained into the runoff sewer which is now gone so any seepage is now confined to the original dump area.
Don’t ask - I grew up in a rural area and quite a few years back.
You push the back end in first and then use a couple trees/logs to make a sort of A-frame and sling it back petard-style fixing the ropes the “high side of center balance”. I can do it better than I can explain it. Since all the weight is “up in the air” it sort of helps force the back end, and everything else, into position. I don’t know any hard facts but most cars I have heard of being buried were sans motor or at least the vast majority of it.
The practices of the “good old days” is what keeps environmental professionals employed today.
Also, I’m sure everyone here realizes that anything poured into a storm sewer ends up in the nearest brook or stream.
There was actually a guy in my neighborhood who was operating an oil-change change business out of his parent’s driveway. His method of draining the oil from the cars was to use a kid’s swimming pool with a hole in it that was positioned over the catch basin in the street. I called the authorities on him, and he got to pay the remediation costs of the catch basin and the brook, plus he was fined. He reportedly thought that oil went to the sewage treatment plant (which is also illegal). However, my neighborhood didn’t even have sanitary sewers. Everyone was on well water and septic systems. :rolleyes:
There’s a friend of mine who lives way out in the sticks with a car buried in his parents’ front yard. Well, it used to be way out in the sticks, now it’s suburbia. The house wasn’t built as part of a subdivision, just former farmland turned into single lots sometime in the 60s. I guess they needed fill for a gully or something and hey, nobody’s looking, just cover it with some fill dirt, nobody will know!
20 years later the car slowly rises from its grave…
Actually there’s another friend with a house on a cul-de-sac, if you peer over the curb at the end of the road, you’ll see the hood of a car emerging from the scrub.
This is in GA, right next door to SC.