Innovative approach to finding USTs
When it comes to tackling the problem of locating abandoned gas stations and their underground storage tanks (UST), the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department is leaving no stone, or patch of dirt, unturned.
While other communities have focused on the post-1980s–when UST regulations were put in place–and preventing any leaking of known USTs, the health department is looking even further back in time, inventorying all USTs in the county, known or unknown.
And it’s doing it in a unique way: No other city or county in Washington is believed to have inventoried its historical USTs using a combination of old city directories and a geographic information system.
It would be nice if all cities and counties had the comprehensive data Tacoma has pulled together to market these brownfields properties for redevelopment, says Sharon Kophs, Washington State Community Trade and Economic Development brownfields program manager. “This is a problem that leaves no community untouched,” Kophs says. And others can learn from the success of Tacoma-Pierce County’s approach.
Inventorying the abandoned gas station sites throughout Pierce County was a long, tedious job that took a couple of years. Working with a $200,000 grant from the Washington state Department of Ecology, Ryan Kellogg began looking through old city directories. Kellogg is a former environmental health specialist for the county who has since taken a position as public health manager of the local hazardous waste program in King County. Going through five-year increments, Kellogg looked through directories from 1925 to the present. Kellogg’s job was to find every listing for a gas station that’s existed in the last 80 years. In fact, he found 746 listings. When he found an address, he scanned and digitalized it.
With the information he had, Kellogg made a map. He then ran the information up against more information he found among records from the county and the Department of Ecology. He was looking to find which sites had gone through extensive redevelopment, or were identified as having been cleaned up.
Kellogg found no indication of cleanup orders or redevelopment for about 350 of the 746 sites. Kellogg visited each of them. Again putting the information on a map, he found most are clustered around intersections. Many are along historical travel routes, in wellhead protection zones and on corner lots at what used to be major arterials. Many are in older, blighted neighborhoods. Still, many are good properties in urban areas where existing infrastructure is in place for redevelopment.
Kellogg then took information from the county assessor’s office, adding in names of current owners and the lots’ current uses. He also got information from census tracks and added the location of these wellhead protection zones. Created was a valuable resource for Pierce County that could be used to prioritize sites for future clean up and redevelopment.
Because of this inventory, Pierce County now has a chance to improve its environmental and community health, build upon economic development and provide better urban planning.
