The Ames Texaco facility had served as an automobile repair shop from approx. 1991 to 1996. Buildings on site are in fair condition. Walls and ceiling are intact, insides are used for storage. Canopy is still in place. Pumps are gone. 4 USTs remain on site. Windows are intact. North side of site has dense tree cover and vegetation with some trash and debris around the trees.
The four USTs were abandoned in place around 1991, and have never been removed. Prior to the 1990s, the property had been used as a retail gasoline service station. OCC records date inspections back to the 1950s. There was a release case on this property in the 1990s, but the tanks on site (i.e. the source) were never removed. It is likely that they have continued to cause contamination problems since the release was discovered.
Ames is a farming community with minimal current downtown commercial development. Rhesa Funk has owned the property since 2021, and has since received sporadic input from the community about what they'd like to see there. Mrs. Funk plans that..
* 25% of the property will be remodeled into rentable space for travelers and tourism in NW Oklahoma.
o Anticipated rental sales 1st year $40,000 Sales Tax/Tourism Tax Town, County, State $5000
* The primary building will be renovated to include multiple entrepreneurial opportunities.
o Remodeled for rental space for food, retail, offices, elder care/feeding, community space, cleaning service, bookkeeping service, advertising agency, drone service, and other yet-to-be determined businesses.
o Anticipated sales 1st year $350,000
o Employees TBD Anticipated 3 Full-Time, 10 Part-Time
However, she is very interested in working with the community to come up with a community-supported redevelopment plan. For this reason, the OCC recommended her to Andrew Portalatin and Emily Jimenez for a Site Reuse Plan & Design through the Land & Revitalization Technical Assistance program.
Interestingly, these buildings are directly north across the street from the Ames Astrobleme Museum, which celebrates Ames' status as the center of an ancient meteor impact. A bit about the museum from travelok.com:
"About 450 million years ago, a meteor 1,000 feet in diameter crashed into the area that is now Ames, Oklahoma producing a crater that is several miles across. The town of Ames is now located in the center of this crater, also known as an astrobleme. The crater cannot be seen on the surface of the earth today because it was subsequently buried by 9,000 feet of sediment. Although the indentation is not visible, a very nice walk-through museum has been established to interpret the cataclysmic event through videos, computer animations, graphs and charts, and more."
The OCC will be using our $2M Assessment grant to conduct the Phase I and Phase II assessments on this property. The details for the assessments will be entered under the CA for that grant. The Phase I is necessary to see if there are any RECs on site besides the tanks that the owner should be aware of. The Phase II ESA needs to include a tank removal because 4 steel USTs installed in the 1950s (two 1,000-gallon and two 6,000-gallon) remain on site. They have been sitting without leak detection or cathodic protection since ~1993. In 1994, they were found to be leaking, and since they were never removed, it's likely they've continued to leak. It is critical that we remove the tanks and see what contamination has leached around and beneath them over the decades.
The Phase I is complete. The Phase II QAPP was submitted to the EPA for review on May 2, 2024 and was approved by EPA on July 3, 2024. The Phase II was completed in October of 2024, with the final report awaiting Brownfield Program approval as of November 5, 2024. Because of the results of soil and groundwater samples, OCC release case #064-1295 has been reactivated at this property. It was previously closed in 2006 because the property was vacant with no reuse plans i