A vacant piece of land on Charleston's West Side, where Kroger has planned to build a gas station, may be one step closer to being ready for development.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection announced Tuesday that the agency had approved the voluntary remediation cleanup plan for the 0.29 acre site located at the intersection of Lee Street West and Pennsylvania Avenue.
The property, which now sits empty, once housed a Speedway gas station, a subsidiary of Marathon. Kroger's plan to build a new gas station on the property had been held up because of concerns over volatile organic compounds that resulted from leaks in the old gas station's underground tanks.
According to the DEP press release, a leak was detected on the property in 1992, when the 12,000-gallon underground storage tanks and other piping for the existing gas station were removed.
Other tanks were then installed and later removed in 2006.
In May, a Kroger spokesperson said the company still was interested in purchasing the site for development, but that it had been held up by issues with the property. The company did not respond to phone calls for this story by the time of publication.
As part of the voluntary cleanup plan, a "land use covenant" will be implemented that bans the use of groundwater from the property for drinking, limits the properties use to commercial and industrial purposes and mandates the use of "vapor mitigation" equipment if any building on the property has a basement.
Dave Long, the DEP project manager for the voluntary remediation project, said state officials still had not received a final report for the site, but he expected that paperwork to be submitted soon.
Once the final report is submitted, Long said the property could be ready for development.
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