environmental question - oil

[muldoon]

I have an environmental question, I know there are people on this forum from all walks of life and backgrounds.  Maybe someone can share some knowledge on something I have been wondering about for a while.  Everyone knows not to dump used motor oil, to collect it and take to to the recycling place.  The reason for it is that it may get into the groundwater.  My question is if a piece of property has crude oil on it, and was once a producing well, and the well water is stained greyish black frequently as direct crude oil is mixed into the water is there really any danger in doing this?  The water can also get a little gooey and plasticy/petroleum smelly as well at times, no doubt it's hydrocarbon infused.  The water literally changes color as different minerals are sucked into the pump, from yellow-ish sulfur, to red iron, to the grey oil noted above (the so called Texas tea).  About 70% of the time it runs clean looking but cloudy. 

If there are thousands and thousands of gallons of oil already there, and it is already mixed into the water - is there any new danger in dumping used motor oil when doing work on tractors and the like?  To date I have not done this, but am curious if anyone can provide a reason why not to in this scenario?

[MountainDon]

If there are no laws against the dumping of new oil, then it is only a moral problem, legally. But it would be wrong.

[ScottA]

I'd dump it over the fence. J/K

Recycle it muldoon you don't want your property on the EPA superfund list.

[fishing_guy]

They can also re-refine the used oil, re-add additives and it can be reused.  I also believe they can re-blend it into fuels...so it's not the best decision to be putting it back into the ground.

[muldoon]

thanks for the comments, that about settles it for me as well. 

[Redoverfarm]

By dumping you are sort of "making a bad situation worse".  In this neck of the woods some have used oil furnaces and will take all that you can give them.

[MountainDon]

I take some of my old motor oil to Autozone or O'Reilly's for recycling. Some of it, mixed with gasoline, gets used as a fire starter for wet/damp piles of tree slash.  That may not be the best thing to do. Maybe I need to rethink that as I wouldn't pour it into my ground.

[glenn kangiser]

You can burn it in a home made furnace and melt cast iron.... now what to do with the cast iron.....

The worst thing about the used oil is that it will float on the rainwater and any other water it gets into then it spreads contaminating the water.

I have seen tons of crude buried in the oilfields when the new laws came out from the EPA, etc.  Thousands of gallons of tarry muck.  It did not contaminate the groundwater and ruin it so much because Texaco had already been pumping their saltwater back into the groundwater and contaminated all of it around that area for years.

To a point, I heard there is a bacteria that eats up the oil and stuff that is spilled daily on the roads and freeways.  That is why we are not swimming in it.  I also have a friend who's dad had a diesel tank leak.  He was made to remove the contaminated earth.  While it was stored and waiting for an EPA or health dept decision he heard about mixing horse manure with it to clean it.  He did - when they came back in a few years they could not find any contamination.

In well drilling I have bailed a bit crude oil out of wells in the oil field areas.  No one died from it that I know of.

Exact answer besides migration to and on water contamination it- I don't know but I don't do it either .  I read that a drop can contaminate thousands of gallons.

[Don_P]

I've heard there are heavy metals and other nasties in used motor oil as opposed to what came out of the ground originally. I have done the gas/oil mix to light bonfires till I saw the rainbow leaving my pile area after a rain and realized it wasn't all burning off (and polluting the air  ). I got a propane weed burner torch to light em with and that has done much better and is safer. Well until someone who shall remain nameless was using it around the garden fence to burn weeds. Never knew lavender has enough essential oil to go poof, it roared down the whole row  .

Off topic but anyway. On the co2 in the environment problem, oil is deeply buried and was safely sequestered, it was in a long term loop. A tree produces the same amount of carbon whether I burn it or leave it on the ground to rot (other pollutants vary though). Trees and other forms of biomass are in the short loop. IF this is a problem it seems to me we should be looking hard at moving towards the short loop and away from the long one. My truck might even smell better running on lavender oil 

[diyfrank]

Sounds like a bad place to live if your well is that bad. Drinking the water or not I wouldn't live in a contaminated area.
Recycle/reuse

[muldoon]

It's not contaminated, it is just naturally produced oil in the soil layers.  The oil well was capped and shut down in the late 70s, at that time they only had the technology to remove about 15-20% of the oil in a reservoir.  The water is high in minerals because millions of years ago it was under the ocean and had a high amount of animal mass buildup the layers of earth.  Mostly sulfur and iron, their are pockets of natural gas in the area and other crude pumpjacks down the road.  It's not contaminated with someone dumping oil, and I have never dumped oil ever (there or anywhere) since I learned better over a decade ago) - it just has oil in the ground.