( CEO gate October 23, 1988 AMNCOUYVER SMILE,BOYS! North Vancouver District firefighters captured the moment by posing for a photo in front of a burning building Thursday. The house, at the corner of Fromme and ff Ross in Lynn Valley, was slated for demolition so the fire department used the structure for firefighting practice. This type of real fire fighting training is invaluabic to the depart- j ment. MERIC “1 ENVIRONMENT EXPERTS CONCERNED ABOUT BURIED OIL TANKS oil A RECENTLY-completed Environment Canada study of Residential Underground Storage Tanks (RUSTs) on the North Shore estimates that approximately 15.2 million litres of fuel oil could be contained in abandoned and deteriorating RUSTs buried around the Lower Mainland. The cumulative threat to local creeks, ground water and soil pos- ed by fuel leeching into the en- vironment from the rotting tanks is substantial, according to En vironment Canada officials. RRS A eee ae eee By TIMOTHY RENSHAW News Reporter Environment Canada research officer Fred Beech said Wednesday the figure represents calculations based on the 126 North Shore tanks measured for the study and is only a projected estimation, “but overall we have a significant problem out there."’ The significance of that pro- blem, he said, has been less ob- vious locally because the Lower Mainland does not depend upon ground water as a fresh water source. “If we were a ground-water us- ing community,’’ Beech said, *twe would be in serious trouble.” He added that he was surprised by the high levels of fuel found during the RUST investigation. The North Shore RUST study was carried out by Environment Canada’s Environmental Emergency Group during the summer to calculate the amount of fuel contained in abandoned tanks and the ecological impact the even- tual discharge of that fuel would have, especially on the North Shore, which has a high concentra- tion of creeks and other environmentally-sensitive water- ways. The tanks, whose capacities range from 1,418 litres to 2,862 litres, were installed around the Lower Mainland from 1945 to 1965 during the post-war housing boom when oil was the primary source of home heating fuel and See N. Shore ‘ .