# How far along is a Colorado cleanup? The stages, explained

> Colorado publishes the stage of every petroleum release cleanup, not merely open or closed. 546 are not closed, 105 of them state lead. What each stage means.

## The stages of a cleanup

Of 17,221 releases on file, **546** are not closed. « Not closed » covers five quite different situations, and Colorado is one of the few states that says which.

### What each stage means

#### Closed — 16,614

the Division has signed the case off. A closed release is a case the regulator considers finished.

#### Closed — no impact confirmed — 37

closed after the Division found no confirmed impact.

#### Open — 37

reported and not yet closed, with no later stage recorded.

#### Site characterisation requested — 92

the Division has asked for the extent of the release to be established. It is the step before a cleanup plan exists.

#### Corrective action plan being implemented — 236

a cleanup plan exists and is being carried out. This is the stage where work is actually happening in the ground.

#### State lead — 105

the State is running the cleanup itself. That happens when the responsible party cannot or does not — it is the most telling status in the file, and it is public.

### Why the distinction is the whole point

A release recorded as *open* and one recorded as *corrective
action plan being implemented* are the same thing in most states’
data and very different things on the ground. The first may be a file nobody
closed; the second is active work.

And **state lead** — 105 releases — carries a
meaning the others do not: the responsible party has not done the work, so the
State has. It says something about the site’s history that no other
field in these files says.

### The stages of releases still open

| Stage | Releases | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Corrective action plan being implemented | 236 | 43.2% |
| State lead | 105 | 19.2% |
| Site characterisation requested | 92 | 16.8% |
| Open | 37 | 6.8% |
| Scr Complete - No Cap Requested | 28 | 5.1% |
| Assessment | 10 | 1.8% |
| Scr Complete - Cap Requested | 9 | 1.6% |
| Need To Investigate | 7 | 1.3% |
| Pcrf/brownfield | 5 | 0.9% |
| Lust Trust | 4 | 0.7% |
| Implementing Cap-ooc | 4 | 0.7% |
| System Test Requested | 2 | 0.4% |

### ⚠️ What a stage is not

It is not a measurement. None of these files records how much was released,
what reached groundwater, or how far anything travelled. A stage tells you
where the paperwork has got to, which is useful and is not the same as knowing
what is in the ground.

506 facilities have a release that is not closed, and
348 of them still have tanks in use. This site does not publish
that list: 506 addresses under a heading like this would read as a
verdict on each one. The counts are here; the individual record is one search
away, with its stage and its dates.

### An unfinished case on a site you are buying?

A stage tells you where the file has got to, not what remains in the ground. Tell us the address and we pass the request to environmental consultants working in Colorado.

We take no commission and we recommend no consultant. We have no arrangement with any firm today — we are collecting these requests in order to go and find them. [What we do with this](/privacy.md).

**Not a consumer reporting agency.** This site
and the datasets sold from it are **not** consumer reports under
the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and must not be used to decide anyone's
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covered by the FCRA. If you need a background check, use a screening company
that operates as a consumer reporting agency.

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Página: https://tanks-co.pages.dev/stage/
Fonte: Regulated storage tanks, facilities and petroleum releases — Colorado Division of Oil and Public Safety (three datasets)
Recolha: 2026-08-21