Environmental Law

UECA Covenant Not Required When Restricting Property to Non-Residential Use

By Joel Bolstein

PADEP recently issued an update to its Fact Sheets on UECA which, for the first time, states that a covenant is NOT required when a remediator uses an institutional control to meet the Act 2 non-residential statewide health standard (SWHS).  You can find the revised fact sheet by going to this link and clicking on Item 4 http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=14295&mode=2&PageID=590867&q=UECA&cp=Site,Documents,News . This has been a bone of contention for the PA Chamber and I know that Mike Meloy and Brian Clark have been pressing for this change.  Congrats to them for getting the Department to agree.  I expect that the UECA regulations, which should be issued in final form very shortly may further clarify this.  The bottom line is that you no longer have to submit an environmental covenant when the levels of contamination on a property exceed the residential SWHS but are at or below the non-residential SWHS and you have demonstrated attainment of the Act 2 non-residential SWHS.   If the regional office directs you to submit an environmental covenant, you should refer to the revised Fact Sheet and contact Troy Conrad in Central Office, if necessary.  Not sure if this means that property owners who previously submitted UECA covenants for such properties can remove those from the deed.   If you fall into that category and you'd like to pursue that,  I would suggest that you wait and see if the UECA regulations address that situation, and if necessary, contact Troy Conrad for guidance. 

Full post as published by PA Brownfields Environmental Law on September 20, 2010 (boomark / email).