Toxic ruins

This story by KRQE out of New Mexico explains rather well why the neighboring state of Arizona has been so aggressive in recent months trying to clean up old, abandoned gas stations along Route 66.

The story focuses on abandoned sites in Grants, N.M. One startling fact — three former stations in Grants have leaked up to 50,000 gallons of gasoline into the soil and groundwater.

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The contamination plume stretches almost 1,000 feet underneath the 1200 block of West Santa Fe Avenue. Environment workers and private contractors have spent the last several years working to clean it up, with dozens of wells connected to vacuum pumps that remove the gasoline and toxic, explosive vapors trapped beneath the ground.

“One morning we came into work and the fumes were so bad in here we had to close,” said Anna Lucero, manager of Badland’s Burgers built on the site of one of the stations. “We had several customers that got up and walked out at first because the smell was so bad.”

The cost to clean up the Triple Site over the last four years has so far reached $5 million. Davis said he expects to spend at least another two years working on the project. […]

According to Davis, contamination sites are common across New Mexico especially along Route 66 where numerous gas stations were constructed during the famous highway’s heyday. The stations had underground gasoline holding tanks built and installed long before modern storage standards and requirements.

“We have approximately 950 contaminated sites statewide, and a fair number of them are scattered along the old highway system in the state,” Davis said.

The video with the story also interviews a guy who says the bad spot in Grants has gasoline contamination five to 10 times the “explosive” level.

So leveling or altering the ruins of, say, an old Whiting Brothers station may disappoint a few Route 66 tourists who want to see the vestiges of the highway’s heyday. But there’s very likely a good reason why it’s happening.