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could cause problems for people building, buying and selling homes.

The two acronyms are used by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to refer to Heating Oil Tanks and Leaking Underground Storage Tanks. However, Portland real estate broker Joan Rogers said HOT LUST is nothing to snicker about when it comes to navigating DEQ regulations.

There is a protocol for decommissioning and reporting old tanks.

鈥淭he problem is that protocol has been a moving target for the past five to 10 years,鈥� said Rogers, a principal broker with . 鈥淵ou can’t force people to do what they ought to do.鈥�

Tanks were often decommissioned without homeowners at the time telling the DEQ. Then houses were sold and new owners discovered that they had tanks listed on the department’s LUST list.

Herrington Rose, a spokesman for the Oregon DEQ, noted that the DEQ in 2000 started a program that certifies contractors. Now, when a tank is removed and a site is cleaned up, the work is automatically reported to the DEQ.

鈥淎pparently these earlier reported release sites remain listed as active contaminated parcel without the ability to receive 鈥楴o further action’ declarations unless a site re-assessment is completed,鈥� he said.

Rogers said it is a fairly common problem.

鈥淚 would say I see it primarily in houses built between 1895 and 1965,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t affects about one in 10 of the older homes I sell. That’s not a small amount. That’s 10 percent.鈥�

New home construction is affected as well, she added.

鈥淚t is never a problem for new home construction 鈥� except when it is,鈥� she said. 鈥淵ou go to build a new house and, guess what, there’s an old storage tank buried on the (property). I always say assume there’s a tank under the house, even if it was built last week. Lack of information doesn’t mean lack of a problem.

鈥淢ost people think they absolutely know that they have a tank on their property if they have one. And yet I’ve found several leaking tanks on properties where the owner swore up and down that it was impossible.鈥�

It’s not a bad idea to check for old storage tanks, said Marcia Denab, a DEQ spokeswoman.

鈥淧eople want to buy a home, and there’s tank in the ground 鈥� they want to make sure they don’t inherit the pollution,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hese things can be negotiated between buyer and seller. We just recommend that when the work gets done, it gets done by a licensed contractor.鈥�

So, what if a homeowner with a decommissioned tank and an open LUST record were looking to sell a house?

鈥淲ell, that’s not good,鈥� Rogers said. 鈥淭he standards for fuel spill chemicals changed about three years ago. Now they are testing for three chemicals instead of one. One of the chemicals, naphthalene, behaves very differently from benzene, which was what they used to test for. Many sites that were clear for benzene before the new standards are not clear for naphthalene now.鈥�

An open LUST site can’t be closed without new soil samples.

鈥淭hen there’s a pretty good chance that the site won’t pass, and the current homeowner is left with having to do another closure or a cleanup,鈥� Rogers said.

Darren Blaine, principal of , said he and his crew remove old (but clean) storage tanks on a fairly regular basis.

鈥淪ometimes they’re safe, and sometimes they don’t get reported,鈥� Blaine said. 鈥淪ometimes it’s a complete mystery why they’re still listed.鈥�

Actually, the mystery is not so deep.

鈥淭here was no process for the companies to close the files,鈥� he said, adding that the situation has since changed and the DEQ now works with contractors.

DEQ officials, however, do not seek out old tanks.

鈥淭hey’re expecting that over time the problem will eventually take care of itself,鈥� Blaine said.

People buying and selling homes also need to know that getting a letter of 鈥淣o further action鈥� from the DEQ guarantees no further action only if conditions don’t change, Rogers said.

鈥淭here are two basic problems: the leaks we knew about and the tanks we didn’t,鈥� said Mike Kortenhof, manager of the Oregon DEQ’s heating oil tank program.

In cases where a tank was removed and a site was cleaned up without the DEQ’s knowledge, Kortenhof said officials will accept the remediation for a small fee.

Kortenhof said he understands the dilemma faced by Rogers and others.

鈥淭hese tanks can be a surprise for real estate agents and homebuyers,鈥� he said.

It is particularly troublesome because there is a 30-day deadline for cleaning up sites after issues are discovered.

鈥淲e often have to deal with people on a very short fuse,鈥� he said. 鈥淪ometimes we don’t hear about the problem until Day 25.鈥�

Always do more than what seems reasonable on the surface, Rogers advised.

鈥淭here are companies that will search the property with underground sonar and now with dogs trained to smell oil,鈥� Rogers said. 鈥淭he latter is invaluable in the case of properties where a tank used to be there 鈥� was taken out of the ground. But there was a spill that nobody knew about because all of this happened 20 years ago because someone thought that taking a tank out was better than decommissioning it.鈥�