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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ish who wrote (28952)	6/14/1999 8:34:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

Funny you should ask. We are thinking about buying a house in Love Canal South. Texaco owns a tank farm that straddles the Fairfax City/County border, and in 1991, it was discovered that jet fuel and gasoline were leaking from the tank farm and had spread through an aquifer into a ritzy neighborhood, at that time the average house in the neighborhood was $320,000, which is low for California but high for here. As part of the clean-up settlement, Texaco bought 62 of the houses, and has been selling off the ones that are in clean areas. So we just got back from the Fairfax City Library, which is the depository for the public documents. Chris, who has a master's in Environmental Health Science, and I, who did a research paper on groundwater cleanup under the Clean Water Act towards my LL.M. (Master of Laws, advanced degree past plain old Juris Doctorate), agree that the testing by EPA over the past 8 years shows that the house we are looking at is fine, and so are the houses for a few blocks west. After that, you get to the really contaminated area, and there's no question that the ground there is contaminated, but the spill is contained, and it's downhill from this house. So, it's really more of a perception problem than a health hazard. That said, what do we offer? Texaco is asking $329,000, which is what it paid in 1993 - the house has been vacant, but it's well maintained. It may have been rented, which is what Texaco does with the other houses, after it makes people sign releases. The assessment is only $257,000, the property values that were sold to Texaco have taken a big hit on the assessments. I just have no way of knowing "what it's worth". I think I'll go to the County Tax office and see if anyone there can give me guidance. The County officials in Fairfax actually are quite helpful with questions like that.