Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Can any of our elected officials provide an update on the gaping hole that was once a Sunoco gas station on Hill Road?

Where are we in the process of getting this site cleaned up? It's been fenced off and seemingly untouched for months now. With the new buildings going up along our primary commercial artery, this is clearly an eye sore that needs to be dealt with.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Eyesore is also a liability


I completely agree. (Except it was an Exxon station.) In addition to being an eyesore, that hole is a liability waiting to happen.

My understanding of the situation is that the initial developer backed out of the deal once the soil analysis showed contamination. Unfortunately, the city seemingly never negotiated a Plan B for this situation. So now the community must wait until another developer comes along to clean up and then develop the site.

The person to talk with about this is Tim Hansley, Pickerington City Manager. His contact information is (614) 837-3974 and/or citymanager@pickerington.net.

I believe Mr. Hansley has also stated that under a worst case scenario he?’d require the initial developer to simply fill in the holes with dirt for safety purposes.

Aren?’t we there yet?


By Proud Pickerington Parent

Working on it

Mr. Hansley has been working with the developer to get the situation remedied without legal action. Unfortunately, our efforts to this point have not been successful. Soon the city will be taking further steps to get the mess cleaned up.

I, as well as other members of council (and city staff for that matter) have a growing frustration with the situation. We are all pushing to have it remedied soon.

I would offer more detail but honestly don't know to what extent I am able to post here without getting myself or our government into trouble.

Rest assured that we all share your frustration and are applying pressure where and when we can to get it fixed as soon as possible.

Thanks for your patience.



By Jeff Fix

Just a waste of money

Tory

This is a great example of big government wasting our public dollars. If we all stop and think that the source and the reason for the ?“big dig?” in front of the old Exxon station was to do a environmental clean up because the tanks that held the fuel were leaking. Those tanks were removed. The source of the contamination has been removed.

Clearly there is no danger to the environment and to all those folks that live around the area, that are all on a central drinking water system and there is next to no chance they our city and our county water supplies would be negatively affected because of this small amount of fuel pollution.

The next insane issue is that the EPA (BUSTER) requires that the owner dig this dirt up and dump it some place safe. So we transport this pollution to another site and then what? This is crazy and it has nearly put the original owner in bankruptcy and it has NOT made our drinking water or our environment any safer.

By Ted Hackworth