Purchasing a property or commencing a development project is stressful enough without having to worry about environmental issues down the line. Unfortunately, for those who neglect the pre-purchase site assessment phase, this is their reality. They believe they’re saving time and money by skipping necessary steps, but in reality, they’re compounding their lost time and potential funds down the line to a disastrous and unnecessary extent.
What You’re Getting With a Site Assessment
The truth is, an environmental site assessment isn’t someone walking onto a property with a clipboard for five minutes. Instead, it’s a comprehensive review of a site’s history, what has or hasn’t occurred there, what remains in the soil or groundwater, and what pitfalls present risk moving forward. The typical process begins with a Phase 1 assessment, where historical data, previous use, and information on any potentially bad adjacent sites are reviewed.
Understand that land remembers. Unless a site has been completely remediated (unlikely), it won’t simply forget that it was a chemical facility decades ago, or that it sits just downstream of contamination with no one alerting the purchaser in the real estate sell. Environmental specialists like Confluence Environmental can help during this phase assess where issues may arise before they become significant pitfalls that halt construction or trigger enforcement actions by regulated agencies.
Should a potential Phase 1 reveal causation for concern, a Phase 2 assessment takes things further and includes actual collection of soil and water samples. This is where environmental consultants literally take data from the ground instead of looking at historical records alone. At this point, consultants can determine the level of contamination and extent of what areas are impacted as well as how much remediation would cost if any.
The Financial Component
The numbers don’t lie. Depending on the size and depth of what has buried itself underground, the average remediation process can run anywhere from tens of thousands to million, and most property insurance policies do not cover environmental contamination; therefore, the owners are liable for whatever needs to happen. But even more so, when people discover this after purchasing, it eliminates property value, renders it impossible to gain financing on contaminated land and essentially makes it unsaleable until it’s remediated.
Banks will not approve loans on contaminated properties without a clear and definitive remediation plan and estimated costs, and prospective buyers will run when environmental issues pop up in due diligence assessments. This isn’t to say it’s a dead end; rather, all negotiating powers are stripped as soon as such issues arise.
An environmental assessment costs significantly less than remediation, and it’s conducted before funds change hands. That means buyers can ask for price reductions, request sellers take care of problems ahead of time (if feasible) or simply walk away if deemed too costly without penalty. The assessment allows access to options instead of blind financial obligations.
Regulatory Compliance and Legal Liability
Regulations don’t care who is responsible for contamination. If it is on one’s property, it is their issue—even if it’s been building for fifty years before they bought the land. This is where things become very messy very quickly.
Environmental clearances must be secured before development projects can commence. Any local council or agency looking at proposed projects in their purview will consider their own environmental impact, or lack thereof, and will deny any project without addressing why an assessment wasn’t conducted first. This makes matters worse when timelines are tight and contractors are waiting; work needs to stop while investigations commence.
Additionally, legal liability goes beyond cleanup costs; if contamination migrates to adjacent properties or into groundwater that people use, property owners will face litigation and regulatory fines. An environmental assessment establishes baseline conditions that help prove the contamination existed before the new owner took over.
What Assessments Catch That People Don’t
Most non-environmental people are looking for tanks still with gas in them, industrial equipment on property or obvious visual staining. Environmental professionals look for more specific concerns. Does a property have old structures with asbestos? What’s the soil condition? Could it impact foundations? Are there threatened species habitats that could trigger 10% protections?
Agricultural land has its own considerations, pesticide/herbicide use from generations past might impact future generation farms; animal farms have waste management issues that don’t go away when animals depart; even good-looking acres in the middle of nowhere have restrictions for native vegetation conservation or water table implications that buyers need to know right away.
It’s not just what’s happening on-site that’s an issue either; it’s what’s adjacent to the site that might pose problems down the road as well. A clean site next to a prior dry cleaner or metal plating company presents contamination concerns from plumes that migrate out of sight underground. These aren’t obvious; however, environmental assessments consult with individuals who know how contaminants travel through soil and groundwater.
Comprehensive Decision Making
No one wants to find out their investment property needs half a million dollars worth of environmental assessments before they can build, but site assessments exist to address these unforeseen circumstances before they’re frustrations by acquiring all relevant information while they can still do something about it.
Those who are smart about their investments and subsequent properties realize that environmental assessments are par for the course, part of standard operation, not an optional add-on. They provide documented conditions of sites assessed to enable informed decision-making and safeguard against unsuspecting liabilities. Peace of mind and avoidance of disaster is worth so much more than the cost of an assessment when it comes to commercial properties or development sites.
Environmental problems don’t get better with time; they get worse and more expensive to resolve. Paying a little now goes a long way compared to discovering issues after construction commences, time is lost and added costs crop up making it worse than ever before.
