More than 30 years ago, now infamous incidents of pollutant releases (in upstate New York and southwestern Missouri)  resulted in toxic contamination that left land worthless and banks owning mortgages on property more costly to clean up than its value.   

In the wake of these events,  the banking industry sought and the environmental consulting profession began to provide a means for rapidly and economically assessing the potential for commercial or industrial property to carry untenable cleanup  liabilities associated with ownership or acceptance as loan collateral.  

When Congress established the Superfund for the cleanup of the most hazardous toxic waste sites, it created an exemption for cleanup cost liability for certain innocent purchasers of environmentally impacted property, termed the "innocent landowner defense."  To qualify for the exemption, an owner or would-be owner would need to demonstrate that "all appropriate inquiries" had been undertaken in the course of a fully diligent pre-acquisition environmental evaluation. Such an evaluation came to be known as a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment or ESA.  

In the 1990s,  the marketplace was beset with variability in the scope, fee and turnaround time for a Phase I ESA.  Everyone was doing them differently.  By the late 1990s, the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) issued Standards for performing Phase I ESAs, which the banking industry gradually and generally came to accept. In 2006, the EPA published its All Appropriate Inquiries rule, which accepted ASTM Standard No. E 1527-05 as compliant by reference.  

Recently ASTM issued a further update to its Standard, and we have learned that EPA is in the process of updating its ruling to recognize the current Standard (E 1527-13) rather than the one it initially recognized as AAI-compliant (E 1527-05). In support of our clients who seek maximum cost-effectiveness in the highly competitive and commoditized market, ALWI supported the continued EPA acceptance of the ASTM -05 Standard.  Earlier this month, however, EPA issued a revised rule-making that will reference ASTM Standard No. E 1527-13.  

ALWI Phase I ESA services remain priced highly competitively in the local market, despite these changes and the associated added time investment. Please contact us if you have any questions regarding the specifics of these changes and for a no-obligation proposal for a Phase I ESA.