Dwight Leigh checks for diesel leaks and other contamination at Ozark's Stampede Country Store, as Larry Davis of Anderson Engineering uses an auger to dig into the gas station's asphalt.
Dwight Leigh looks on as a 5-foot auger digs into an Ozark gas station’s asphalt, three small glass jars in hand.
“Gonna go smell some dirt,” he says over the rhythmic screech of concrete against metal, before kneeling to inspect the anthill-like mound around the drill.
He holds the dirt to his nose before compacting it into the jars.
Leigh and his company, Nixa-based Leigh Environmental LLC, have been smelling dirt, sampling water and inspecting petroleum tanks for 15 years. The company assesses and cleans up environmental risks and contamination, mostly in Missouri and Kansas but also at sites nationwide.
“We’ll do everything,” Leigh says. “We can take everything from beginning to end.”
On Sept. 27, he was at Ozark’s Stampede Country Store, checking for diesel leaks and other contamination in what’s called a Phase II, or risk-based, assessment. Phase I simply establishes the risk of contamination existing, often without on-site work.
“If we find contamination here, we will then go into cleanup,” Leigh says. “What we do is prove that it’s safe for human health and the environment.”
Leigh came into the cleanup industry after years as a petroleum geologist and environmental geoscientist. He left Springfield-based Environmental Works Inc. and launched his own company in March 1998.
“It was just a one-man show,” Leigh says of those early days.
A year later, he hired Matt Eisenbacher, a National Guard veteran who worked at the time as an environmental scientist. Now, the company has seven staff members, including one in Kansas City.
Leigh Environmental mostly cleans petroleum-based chemicals, but it also has been brought in to clear acid spills and methamphetamine labs and to perform biological cleanups, such as at a crime or suicide scene, though Leigh says the latter two have decreased.
The company completed 240 projects last year, and Leigh says at any one time, about two dozen risk-based assessments are ongoing, as well as between five and 10 Phase I assessments. The team often visits sites in Minnesota, Texas, New York and other states, in addition to recent inspections and assessments in downtown Springfield, including the Woodruff building. Leigh says the company’s on the same pace this year, though he declined to disclose revenue. With the commercial work, Leigh has pulled back on the company’s residential mold removal services.
During the company’s early years, changes in regulations prompted a spate of storage tank removals, Leigh says. Removals are picking up again, he adds, as the replacement tanks begin to fail. In the past year, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources has called increasingly on environmental companies to inspect empty gas stations as well.
Most often, Leigh’s company is called by a bank to inspect a property for potential environmental problems, as was the case in Ozark.
“If you’re taking it as collateral, that’s what you’re looking for,” says Eldon Erwin, a senior vice president at Liberty Bank, which has often hired Leigh Environmental. “If you have a leaking underground storage tank, it’s going to take a lot of money to clean something up like that.”
Projects can run between $1,800 for a Phase I assessment to $1 million for some of MDNR’s cleanups. “It falls everywhere in between,” Leigh says, pointing to $500,000 cleanup jobs of abandoned gas stations in Fair Grove and Northview to remove gasoline tanks and prevent groundwater contamination.
Lenders providing U.S. Small Business Administration-guaranteed loans also come to Leigh, he says. Specifically, SBA 504 loans are used to buy major fixed assets such as real estate, for which lenders might hire environmental firms to inspect.
Annette Darnell, a Lebanon loan officer with Jefferson City-based small-business lender RMI Inc., says her company and Leigh have a solid relationship. RMI leans on Leigh Environmental about a half dozen times a year, and a few weeks ago, the company performed a routine assessment of an office building.
“They are very professional, easy to work with, perform the reports we need in a timely manner and have always been willing to adjust the reporting to meet the requirements of the SBA,” she says.
This installment of Springfield Business Journal’s Architects & Engineers Project Report showcases 26 endeavors by area design and engineering professionals.
