John and Kathleen Murray’s property in North Attleborough, Massachusetts, has looked more like a hazardous waste cleanup site since February.

That’s when about 190 gallons of heating oil emptied out of a tank and into the soil around their home. Kathleen Murray recalled the reaction from first responders when they arrived to mitigate the spill.

“I knew it was serious because everyone was looking at us with pity,” she said. “Then I started to research it, and it was horrifying.”

The Murrays initially assumed the expensive environmental cleanup would be covered by their home insurance policy. They were wrong.

So far, the couple has already shelled out $90,000 for large machinery to dig around the property they’ve owned since 1993, remove contaminated soil, and test for remnants of the heating oil.

Courtesy

Courtesy

With plenty of remediation work on the horizon and required approval from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to close the case, the costs will continue to pile up.

“It’s the stages of grief,” Kathleen Murray said. “At first, you don’t believe it. And then you’re trying to figure out how to get around it. And then it’s anger and frustration.”

It’s the latest example of an issue the NBC10 Boston Investigators have been highlighting for years.

Heating oil spill cleanups can mean jackhammering cement in the basement, testing for pollution in ground water, and sometimes even lifting a home off its foundation to access contaminated soil.

Courtesy

Courtesy

The homeowners we’ve interviewed were always stunned to learn they would be on the hook for the massive price tag.

The NBC10 Boston Investigators first put a spotlight on the financially devastating issue in 2019.

Katherine Hamelin, a Sutton widow, endured the nightmare scenario when she discovered a heating oil spill inside her home.

And Donna Barron, a Blackstone mother of three kids, discovered she was on the hook for the cleanup costs of an oil spill that happened years before she bought the home.

The DEP ultimately stepped in to handle the required remediation, admitting it had failed to follow up on the condition of the property for years before Barron purchased it.

There are other examples, like an East Bridgewater homeowner, who learned the news when he was in the hospital recovering from COVID-19; a Hopkinton man who drained more than $500,000 in retirement savings; and a Rutland couple — both military veterans — whose picturesque property was turned upside down.

For years, a relatively affordable insurance rider for heating oil spills has been available in Massachusetts. But here’s the catch: Homeowners need to be aware of the coverage and ask their insurance agent about it.

That is why the Murrays recently shared their ordeal with lawmakers at the Massachusetts State House. They are part of a growing push to make insurance coverage for heating oil spills mandatory for all policies.

“You have the power to change that,” Kathleen Murray testified. “When you live through something like this, financial ruin is no longer just a concept. You feel it every day.”

The emotional plea seemed to leave an impression on lawmakers who serve on the Joint Committee for Financial Services.

Sen. Paul Feeney, who chairs the committee, asked Murray to repeat the cleanup costs to make sure he’d heard the correct amount.

“We want to make sure that this is the year that we come to some sort of solution,” Feeney said. “The system has failed you.”

Chris Stark, the executive director of the Massachusetts Insurance Federation, told lawmakers that a compromise should include ways to contain cleanup costs, while also requiring maintenance and inspections of oil tanks.

“We have to make sure that we’re doing all that we can do to ensure this oil isn’t making it into the ground in the first place,” Stark said.

State records show over the past decade, there is an average of roughly 100 heating oil spills per year in Massachusetts.

Since we started highlighting the issue, the DEP credits our reporting for a notable increase in the number of people with insurance coverage.

Homeowners with the rider have more than doubled since our first report in 2019. Back then, DEP figures show about 48,000 policyholders had coverage. In 2023 — the most recent year available — that figure had grown to 114,000 policyholders.

However, that is still only a fraction of the 615,000 homes that heat with oil in the commonwealth.

NBC10 Boston

NBC10 Boston

Any change to state law will come too late for the Murrays. The couple’s youngest of three children is about to head to college. They had almost paid off the mortgage and were contemplating retirement in the coming years.

Instead, they are now facing an estimated bill of $400,000 for the heating oil cleanup.

“That’s [like] buying our house again,” Kathleen Murray said. “It blows up our retirement. It blows up when we can stop working. It changes everything.”