A small-town banker recently lamented that there is little hope of economic redevelopment in his hard- pressed southern Illinois community because the risks of contaminated property will drive away investors. While the financial responsibilities imposed by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund) may seem like an extreme obstacle to overcome, no community is at a disadvantage because these liabilities apply equally across the country. Fears of economic decline need not be attached to relict hazards because creative units of government can turn these seeming liabilities into tools for enhancing development opportunities. Community Site Assessments One very important step communities can take is to conduct thorough inventories of local relict hazards on their own. By identifying zones of risk, communities can remove doubt about the viability of other tracts of land and also diminish the need for phase I site assessments for every idle piece of property. It is far more cost effective for the local municipality to conduct a community-wide hazard inventory rather than expecting potential developers to bear the burden of several distinct site assessments. In fact, it may not cost much more to prepare a large-scale site assessment of a town's industrial district than it would to prepare a similarly detailed assessment for a single parcel of land within that district. Communities seeking to undertake such an inventory should confer with a reputable consulting firm that has experience and qualified staff in site assessment work. As a first step the community should have consultants perform site assessments in areas that are most conducive to future economic development, and then on locations throughout the municipality that are most likely to have been the scene of hazardous material- related activity (See Fig. 1). Certainly all former industrial property, railroad corridor land, and any former quarries should fall into the assessment area. In terms of abandoned underground storage tanks, zones where gasoline stations closed during the 1970s would be most likely to contain leaking tanks. The goal of the community site assessment is to document high-risk sites that need further investigation

Figure 1: Zones of potential hazardous material accumulation are depicted in this hypothetical city. Land reclamation near the urban core consisted of mixed urban refuse with only small quantities of hazardous materials present. The zones of greatest risk include the railroad corridors where substantial land surface alteration occurred during a period when there was little regulation of waste disposal. Post-war landfills commonly received a mixture of general urban refuse and hazardous wastes. Risks are somewhat reduced in areas of dispersed burial due to lower population densities, although rural populations rely heavily on groundwater supplies. Source: Colten and Mulville-Friel, 1990. and to create a due diligence type defense for prospective developers by certifying that sites are clean and ready for new land use. A quality site assessment will enable a community to distinguish between the locations of contaminated and safe land. In addition to improving the climate for business, knowledge of such hazard accumulations can be incorporated into the local planning process. Relict waste sites can have an adverse impact on water supplies, school and park development, as well as simple public works improvements, but by being aware of their presence communities can prevent improper use of tainted land. There are numerous communities and regional planning agencies that have attempted to inventory some part of the type information contained in a site assessment. For instance, Winnebago County and the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission have conducted surveys of landfills. Such inventories are useful

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but cannot take the place of a community-wide site assessment; landfilling is just one aspect of a community's historical land use activities. By preparing a community-wide assessment, units of local government can go a long way towards minimizing the negative impact of environmental liabilities.

Improve Local Inventories of Old Records
One of the most pressing problems facing site assessment preparers is the inconsistent and oftentimes incomplete inventories they have to work with. Researchers seek information on chemical and petroleum storage tanks, industrial and general waste disposal, incidents involving hazardous material releases, and other hazards-related activities. A number of local agencies maintain listings or inventories of these phenomena as well as various types of historical records. These information sources need to be organized in a manner so that researchers can review them efficiently and rely on their accuracy. The Illinois Department of Transportation engineers report, for example, that about half of the underground storage tanks they encounter in road improvement projects are not listed in the state or local fire marshal's inventories; a recent review7 of underground tank locations in Macomb identified similar shortcomings. Federal and state agencies can have extremely incongruous records while their often delayed responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests make such documents effectively- inaccessible. Communities can streamline their site assessment process by compiling a local inventory of sites where hazardous materials have been handled. This can be done by submitting FOIA to state and federal agencies well in advance of the time when they will be needed. In addition, units of local government should review their own systems for chronicling underground storage tanks and other potential hazards, and then work to improve their procedures.

Whether inventories deal with tanks, landfills, or industries, it is essential that they contain precise geographical information. All too often inventories give vague locational information (e.g., five miles west of town on highway 12). While this may seem perfectly clear to the person who initially collected the field data, outsiders may not be able to pinpoint the site. If consultants have to spend hours trying to locate an abandoned landfill, their costs will go up. By supplying researchers with precise and reliable data, communities can minimize the cost of site assessments and pass these savings on.

The nature of CERCLA liabilities necessitates that older records be maintained for considerable periods of time. Inventories that deal with industry and hazardous substances need to be maintained in an easily accessible form for decades, not years. For example, one state agency with jurisdiction over railroad spills maintains records of such incidents for three years, but site assessment preparers seek to review documents covering 50 to 100 years. Records that relate to potential hazardous-materials release should be maintained for a minimum of seventy-five years. The more records that are kept on hand the more important it is to maintain an orderly filing system and indexes. Annual indexes should be prepared to provide ready access to older documents and to minimize staff time on information requests.

In terms of documenting past land uses, it is vitally important to keep the contents of various inventories or records consistent over time. This assures some degree of certainty when comparing activity at a site in 1930 with land uses in 1980.

Accessibility is another important issue. Certainly, the most recent records need to be given priority treatment and be housed with frequent use in mind. Yet, older documents must be placed in locations that permit reasonable public access and provide for at least minimal preservation. Dark basements or unheated warehouses do neither.

Whether a local record-keeping department com-

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Legal Action
The principal reason that the CERCLA legislation came into being was to provide the federal government with a tool for cleaning up hazardous substances that posed a threat to public health. This benefit is sometimes vilified amidst the grumblings about site assessments. Nevertheless, CERCLA includes powerful tools for federal action and for local governments.

In the course of preparing a community assessment, environmental contamination may be discovered. CERCLA authorizes communities to take the initiative and proceed directly against polluters. Kent Hanson and Adam Babich, two Colorado attorneys, have written widely on the powers granted to communities under CERCLA. They report that communities can seek reimbursement of expenses incurred when protecting the public from pollution that has damaged or destroyed natural resources and undertaking legal action against those causing environmental problems. Damages to natural resources may include public water supplies; parks, nature preserves, or other public lands; and damages for the loss of the benefits that these resources provided (e.g., alternative water supplies, fishing, hiking, swimming).

Community assessments can prove beneficial by identifying the problems that can be solved through legal channels.

Conclusions
Community officials must be cognizant of the potential liabilities imposed by Superfund, and of the law's beneficial intent to rectify areas of environmental degradation. If a community initiates actions to identify relict hazards, there will be less likelihood of acquiring contaminated property, encountering unexpected contamination of public water supplies, or dealing with last-minute decisions by manufacturers to locate elsewhere. Identifying historical accumulations of hazardous materials can only be to a community's advantage. •

Suggested Readings
K, Hansen and Adam Babich. "Local Governments and the Environment, Parts I and II," Colorado lawyer 17 (1988).

John R. Funderburk III, "Site Assessments Call for Variety of Approaches,: HazMat World 3: 3 (1990): 40-49.

Albert R. Wilson, Environmental Risk: Identification and Management, Chelsea, MI: Lewis Publishers, 1990.

Acknowledgment: The information in this article is the result of research financed wholly or in part by the Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center of the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources. It does not necessarily reflect the Center's views.

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