Nelson Stone of Stone Sand Company had the easy job.
Stone’s excavator did all of the heavy lifting that removed remnants of a former gas station Wednesday at 10th Street and Morphy.
The future home of Dollar General will be located at 1017 and 1019 Morphy, which was rezoned from multi-family residential to general commercial in May to allow for construction.
It is unusual to see a 12-foot deep crevice in the middle of town. But the deep hole was necessary to remove all of the potentially hazardous remnants of a former gas station.
Randy Carlson, Kansas Department of Health and Environment, leads the bureau of environmental remediation.
Carlson said Stone Sand bid $40,000 for the gas station removal. Most of the dirt will be reused and the concrete will be recycled. The dirt that didn’t pass a soil test by a KDHE inspector will be removed from circulation.
“The area was free to do a lot more excavation work than you’d normally see,” Carlson said. “It was an abandoned site with no responsible party.”
Great Bend City Attorney Bob Suelter said that the street will better accommodate traffic, and adequate parking has been designed for the location.
The Storage Tank Act establishes two separate Trust Funds to assist owners and operators of storage tanks with the cost of remedial actions. Both funds are designed to provide financial assistance to owners and operators of facilities where contamination from petroleum storage tanks has occurred.
In 1986, Congress created the Leaking Underground Storage Tank (LUST) Trust Fund to address petroleum releases from federally regulated underground storage tanks (USTs) by amending Subtitle I of the Solid Waste Disposal Act.
The LUST Trust Fund provides money to oversee cleanups of petroleum releases by responsible parties; enforce cleanups by recalcitrant parties; pay for cleanups where the owner is unknown; and conduct inspections and other release prevention activities.
The Trust Fund is financed by a 0.1 cent tax on each gallon of motor fuel sold nationwide. EPA’s UST program receives approximately $100 million annually to prevent, detect, and clean up releases from federally-regulated USTs.
C.R. Crawford Construction from Fayetteville, Ark., is the general contractor. Joe Holly is the foreman coordinating the work crews.
Mike Sharkey Construction from Otis will lay the concrete flooring Friday and expects to work 45 days during construction. Stueder Contractors, Inc. is performing the plumbing work. Haynes Electric landed the electrical contract. Golden Mechanical from Arlington, Texas, is doing the heating and air conditioning work.