UST Check → methodology
Methodology & sources
The source
Everything on this site and in every report comes from one cited public source: EPA UST Finder (Office of Research and Development / Office of Underground Storage Tanks). A national database of state-reported underground storage tank facilities, tanks, and leak (LUST) incidents, compiled and risk-annotated by EPA. States report different attribute sets — missing values are shown as not reported, never as zero.
- Facilities (741,380): name, address, coordinates, open/closed/TOS tank counts, status, last inspection where reported, plus EPA-computed context (100-yr floodplain, private wells and population within 1,500 ft, wellhead/source-water protection areas).
- Leak incidents — LUST (529,159): reported date, cleanup status (Open / No Further Action), substance where reported.
- Tanks (2,297,155): per-tank status, installation/removal dates, capacity, substance, wall type — joined to facilities.
- County statistics: EPA's own county aggregates (we don't recompute them; we spot-check them against the facility table).
Vintages and refresh
EPA updates UST Finder periodically from state submissions; the current data vintage is 2024-12-04 (EPA's last data edit), re-ingested here weekly (last: 2026-06-12). Both stamps appear on every page and report. States report on their own cycles — anything decision-critical should be verified against the state registry record linked from the report row.
Distances and the at-parcel call
- Reports use EPA's recorded coordinates. Facilities within ~75 m (246 ft) of the geocoded address are treated as "at/adjacent to the parcel", with the street address shown so you can confirm; coordinate precision varies by state.
- Rings are 500 ft and 1,500 ft (EPA's own risk-context radius); the commercial tier extends releases to 0.5 mi. Addresses geocode via the US Census geocoder; "lat, lon" input is accepted everywhere.
A screen is not an ESA — the honest limits
- Missing values render as "not reported", never as zero — states report different attribute sets.
- The absence of a registered tank is not the absence of a tank: pre-1986 removals and most residential heating-oil tanks were never registered. Physical confirmation is a tank sweep (typically $125–$400, published incumbent rates cited in every report, verified 2026-06-12).
- A Phase I ESA (typically $2,000–$4,500) is the professional standard for commercial transactions; this screen tells you in ten seconds what its records review will find in the tank registries.
Corrections
Where pages name real facilities or sites, every fact is attributed to the EPA record it came from, with its vintage. If something is wrong, reply to any email from us — a human reads it, and we correct or remove promptly.