The USEPA does not hold property purchasers responsible for contamination that was preexisting, provided that the owner made a good faith attempt to identify contamination from hazardous substances or petroleum released on the property or neighboring properties. Therefore many commercial property transactions require a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment by an environmental professional. An ASTM standard has been published that describes how an Environmental Site Assessment should be conducted.

"All appropriate inquiries" is the process of evaluating a property’s environmental conditions and assessing the potential liability for any contamination. The final USEPA rule is effective on November 1, 2006. Until then either ASTM E 1527-00 or ASTM E 1527-05 will satisfy the statutory requirements to meet all appropriate inquiries.

The environmental review must be conducted by an experienced environmental professional such as a licensed professional engineer with three years of relevant experience. Other combinations of education and experience are also acceptable.

The environmental professional must conduct an inquiry that includes the following:

• Interviews with past and present owners, operators and occupants;

• Reviews of historical sources of information;

• Reviews of federal, state, tribal and local government records;

• Visual inspections of the facility and adjoining properties;

• Commonly known or reasonably ascertainable information; and

• Degree of obviousness of the presence or likely presence of contamination at the property and the ability to detect the contamination.

Additional inquiries that must be conducted by or for the prospective landowner include:

• Searches for environmental cleanup liens;

• Assessments of any specialized knowledge or experience of the prospective landowner;

• An assessment of the relationship of the purchase price to the fair market value of the property, if the property was not contaminated; and

• Commonly known or reasonably ascertainable information.

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In November of 2005, I attended the Brownfields 2005 Conference in Denver, Colorado as a guest of the City of Davenport. I was invited because I had served on the West Davenport Brownfields Technical Committee and helped the City with several redevelopment grant applications. The conference was an inspirational discussion of how to rejuvenate and redevelop properties that had seen better days. It was particularly gratifying to see the City of Dubuque’s good work honored with a Phoenix award. Dubuque’s decade plus effort to redevelop the Ice Harbor area is very worthy of national recognition.

One hot topic at the conference was the newly published final rule on "All Appropriate Inquiries" and the associated ASTM E 1527-05 Standard Practice for Environmental Site Assessments: Phase I Environmental Site Assessment Process. This establishes the official process for conducting environmental due diligence in property acquisitions. Purchasers who adhere to this practice are afforded a shield from future federal action and are likely to have a good understanding of the environmental history and condition of a site before they purchase it. The standard establishes that the environmental professional must meet stringent professional and experience standards. The standard also requires the buyer to obtain information about environmental liens and property use restrictions that have been placed on property titles.

Hopefully other area cities will be recognized for redevelopment efforts at future Brownfields conferences.

Preston has been doing property assessments for fifteen years. In a majority of sites recognized environmental conditions (REC) are not found. In cases where a REC is listed a Phase II soil and groundwater investigation is done.

A Phase II investigation should be comprehensive and include sampling protocols that will be acceptable to the regulatory agency (normally Iowa DNR or Illinois EPA) that may end up reviewing the inspection report. The sample results are typically compared to State action levels for individual contaminants. If the detected levels are below the state action levels, then the site is normally considered clean.

Soil or groundwater contamination that is above state action levels is typically reported to the appropriate state agency. Both Iowa and Illinois have a risk based corrective action process where sites can receive a no further action letter. This may require additional investigation and some cleanup. Sometimes restrictions on future use of the property may be appropriate. In many cases the agencies determine that the site does not pose a significant risk.

Some sites may simply require the removal of drums of waste or underground storage tanks. In a few cases extensive problems have been found.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has extended (again) the deadline for compliance with the revised oil pollution prevention and response regulations until October 31, 2007. This means that subject oil handling facilities have until then to amend their spill prevention, control and countermeasures (SPCC) plan to meet the new requirements. This extension does not affect the duty to comply with the previous SPCC regulations. Most facilities will need to update plans to conform

to the revised SPCC rule. Equipment containing 55 gallons or more of oil and underground storage tanks that are exempt from the underground storage tank regulations are now covered by the new SPCC rule. For more information, log on to www.epa.gov/oilspill.