Contributed by Walt Henley, Senior Geologist, PPM Consultants
Sometimes bad things happen when you least expect them. Back in the year 2000 (good Lord, was that 25 years ago?), the actor Harrison Ford took an out-of-character movie role as a college professor living a simple but idyllic life in a lakeside Vermont home. His screen wife, played by the beautiful Michelle Pfeifer, experiences disturbing encounters with an unseen entity that seems bent on destroying their happy marriage. The more hidden facts she discovers, the more afraid she becomes.
Kind of like that nice property you’ve convinced yourself to buy in the historic old town area (forgive me for the stretched metaphor, but you ARE reading an environmental newsletter). Like the ghost story, the more you investigate, the scarier it becomes.
Fear not. Not all property transactions end like a horror movie. But you better be prepared, just in case.
Let’s set the scene. You have found the perfect spot for a new restaurant and several loft apartments. Part of downtown has been successfully revitalized. Other nice food establishments have popped up, and people are flocking back. You’re savvy enough to check for environmental liabilities. You know the bank will require a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (ESA). But the old furniture store that sat on your preferred lot was a fixture for more than 40 years. Plus, you think you remember that you may have heard from a friend of a lawyer’s brother-in-law that you only have to research its use for the last 40 years. Besides, nothing bad could happen in a furniture store. This deal is a no-brainer, right?
As the old coach likes to say: Not so fast, my friend.
Even if a bank is not involved, it’s a good idea to perform a Phase I ESA, the purpose of which is to determine if any recognized environmental conditions (RECs) exist on a property. What the guidance actually says is that the history of the property and the adjoining properties must be researched back to 1940 or to its first use, whichever is earlier. The use of the surrounding area must be researched but only to the extent that it is revealed in the course of determining the subject property’s use. In other words, comb through the same historical records you find for the subject property to look for other contamination sources that could have affected the subject property. Let’s say you found the subject property and the adjoining properties on Sanborn fire insurance maps dating between 1905 to 1960. Turns out the subject property was a small hotel before it was a furniture store. Nothing obviously bad about that. The adjoining properties were used for retail. So far, so good. But then, on the Sanborn maps from 1932, 1948, and 1960, you see them. At the end of the block, three doors away and definitely downhill, there once was a “filling station”. And there, in the other direction on the next block, another haunting image – a former dry cleaner. Are they scary RECs? Or simply harmless ghosts?
Here is where you need a good environmental professional. An old filling station located 300 feet away in a down-gradient direction is not likely a REC. Even if it had a leak, which old gas stations almost always have, it wouldn’t likely travel toward the subject property. On the other hand, if the filling station is down-gradient, then the other direction (the direction of the dry cleaner) should be up-gradient.
What’s all this talk about up and down, you ask. In a nutshell, if a leak of gasoline or dry-cleaning solvent occurs, it first percolates down through the soil until it reaches the groundwater. Gasoline, in its free undissolved form, stops its downward migration there because it is lighter than water. Slowly, its chemicals dissolve into the groundwater. But the water continues to move, typically down-gradient toward the nearest creek or other surface water where it discharges. New rainfall percolates through the soil to take its place. It’s a continuous cycle. Up to a point, it’s somewhat predictable if you know what to look for. The trick, if you want to call it that, in a Phase I is to figure out if the water is moving the dissolved contamination from the filling station toward or away from the subject property. If the filling station is down-gradient from the subject property, and the nearest surface water is away from your dream lot, then an environmental professional would likely say the filling station is not a REC. One ghost vanquished. One to go.
The specter of the dry cleaner, when perchloroethylene (PCE) was the main solvent and leaks were common, rears its ugly head. When PCE percolates through the soil and encounters groundwater, it tends to first spread out a bit on top of the water table, but then it continues to sink. That’s because it is heavier than water. Down it goes until it finds a barrier, maybe a clay lens or the top of competent bedrock. Maybe the bedrock is fractured. If so, the pure solvent or its dissolved phase might move along those broken joints. They might move a very long way. If the dry cleaner is up-gradient from the subject property, this ghost will be harder to deal with. It’s going to be called a REC, and you’ll probably have to take samples in a Phase II ESA to confirm whether it’s real or not.
Let’s add another element to our story. You’re not going to install a drinking water well, so you don’t have to worry about someone at the new condos ingesting the contamination. So, your real worry is whether someone comes into direct contact with it or perhaps breathes the vapors that come off the contaminant plume. Turns out, the likelihood of either of those bad outcomes is mitigated by depth. If the Phase II establishes that the water table is 30 feet deep, there is little chance that anyone would dig that far during construction. Likewise, even if you find impacts in the groundwater, vapors from a plume that deep are not a real threat to reach the surface. Relatively inexpensive vapor sampling could prove that. And a vapor barrier added to the design of the restaurant will safeguard against intrusion. Put living spaces on the second floor, and the risk is even less.
PPM staff and management are trained in the science of environmental risks. We know where the liabilities are hiding. We know the regulatory processes and people you may need to deal with to get the proper stamp of approval if you need to go that far. In other words, we know how to help exorcise ghosts. If you want to discuss the risks on your project, please reach out to me at walt.henley@ppmco.com. With a little of the right kind of help, maybe you won’t have to worry quite as much about what lies beneath.