I live in St. John, MO, a suburb of St. Louis. The next community over is Overland, MO. QT has stations all over this part of MO and they decided to put a station on a busy intersection in Overland, so they purchase the old building that sat on the property, and an old taxi garage on the next property. It seemed that the taxi garage had a gas pump and a underground tank, and the leakage was so bad they have to go down almost 20 feet on the entire property to remove the contaminated dirt.
Another story.
Two M&S 80 sat in the middle of a property off the side of a large industrial building, again here in St. Louis County. I had been keeping my eye on the pump waiting for the right time to purchase them. One day I saw that they were removing the pumps and were digging down to remove the tanks.
After buying the pump I started talking to a guy about the removal of the tanks. There were more guys there in dress suits than there were workers. I asked him who they were. He said that guy is with the federal EPA, that guy is with the state EPA, that guy is with the County EPA. Finally got around to asking him how much all this was costing the owner of the business. He said in excess of $15,000 and this was 15 years ago.

I know of one other instance in St. Louis City that cost Phillips over $100,000 to clean up a property, and get this, the property was owned by the Shell Oil Co. and leased by Phillips.

It is not how much it cost to remove the tanks, it is how much does it cost to remove all the contaminated soil and all those old metal tanks leaked. New tanks are fiberglass and are two tanks, one inside the other.

As stated above, unless you have just the the Power Ball, I wouldn't even ask how much they want for the property.

Jack Sim


Author, 1st & 2nd editions of Gas Pump ID book, 3rd edition is now available at www.gaspumpbible.com
Air Meter ID book also available