Jul. 21--FARMINGTON -- The city of Farmington is threatening to ticket owners of closed gas stations overgrown with weeds and littered with trash if the properties aren't cleaned soon.

The Farmington Police Department sent letters earlier this month to four shuttered gas stations, three with weeds several feet high on their properties.

Farmington City Councilman Jason Sandel is leading the push to get the gas stations' owners to pull weeds and pick up trash.

"They're an eyesore on our community," Sandel said.

A former employee of Amigo Petroleum, which owned some gas stations before other companies bought them, asked Sandel to address the problem, Sandel said. Sandel declined to name the former employee.

"He felt ashamed of what those facilities look like," Sandel said.

Tall weeds grew inside and outside the fence of a boarded gas station owned by Western Refining at 517 W. Broadway, according to the city. Plastic bags and Styrofoam cups laid along the chain-link fence surrounding the dilapidated gas station.

The unkempt property disappoints Sasha King, who lives next door. King and her three younger sisters used to buy candy there.

These days, drunk people loiter around the shuttered gas station, she said.

"It's not helping our area just sitting there," she said.

Eddie Alexander, who walks by the gas station every day, said it was an eyesore.

Cleaning up "goes with the responsibility of owning land," he said.

Other letters were addressed

to Giant Industries gas stations at 219 and 2501 E. Main St.

Western Refining owns Giant, Mustang and Sundial gas stations in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, according to its Web site.

Western Refining plans to clean up the three gas stations later this week, though it has not received any letters from the city yet, company spokesman Gary Hanson said.

"It's important for us to maintain those," he said. "We thought we had a regularly scheduled plan in place, and we'll take care of those this week."

Jazed Chaudhary, chief financial officer for Pyramid Petroleum, which owns three closed Farmington gas stations, said the company closed them because it was losing at least $5,000 to $6,000 per gas station each month. He is trying to sell the properties.

"There was no business," Chaudhary said.

The city mailed the Houston-based company a certified letter July 16 accusing the company of allowing weeds to grow at one of its gas stations, at 1721 E. 20th St.

Chaudhary had not received a July letter and he was surprised to hear the city sent one, he said.