Potential Environmental and Regulatory Liabilities at Real Estate Entities
The most common environmental and regulatory exposures encountered by real estate entities include:
- Contaminants from known and unknown historical usage/operations or neighboring properties.
- Investigation and defense due to local and regional soil and groundwater contamination.
- Air emissions from ammonia-based refrigeration systems.
- Construction debris containing hazardous materials (e.g. paint cans, tars, etc.)
- Sick Building Syndrome (i.e. carbon monoxide, mold or bacterial air releases from faulty heating, ventilation or air conditioning systems).
- Hazardous chemical storage including laboratory chemicals, medical wastes from doctor and dentist offices, dry cleaning solvents, pesticides and herbicides used both indoors and outdoors, etc.
- Inadequate containment at loading/unloading areas.
- Inadequate containment for hazardous materials, waste and process areas.
- Lead, asbestos, PCBs and radioactive material.
- Methane contamination from buried tree stumps and construction debris.
- “Midnight dumping” on vacant land parcels.
- Past landfills, lagoons and other solid waste disposal areas.
This is not an exhaustive list of environmental exposures. It represents the most common environmental exposures for this industry.
Source – Zywave, Inc.
