Nobody lends on a property until somebody has been under it.

0.0 ft · Ground surface

The reason you are here is that a lender said no.

Almost nobody commissions an environmental assessment because they want one. A bank will not close on commercial ground, or an SBA lender will not fund the note, until somebody with a licence has looked at the property's history and signed their name to what they found.

That is a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment, and the standard it has to meet is ASTM E1527-22. Meeting it is what earns the buyer the Landowner Liability Protections under CERCLA, which is the actual product. A report that does not meet the standard does not protect anybody, and it is the reason the cheapest quote is sometimes worth nothing at all.

• Standard Phase I, commercial parcel under 5 acres$2,850
• Each additional contiguous parcel$650
• Rush, delivered in 8 business days+$900
• Report reliance letter for a second lender$350

2.5 ft · Fill

Most of the work happens in a records room, not on the site.

The top few feet of any developed lot are fill, brought in by somebody, from somewhere, for a reason nobody wrote down. The paper record is how you find out what that reason was.

• Sanborn fire insurance maps, every published year1885–1970
• Historical aerials and topographic sheets1938 onward
• City directories, to name every occupantby decade
• Federal and state regulatory databases, plus the radius search1 mile
• Missouri DNR registered tank and spill recordsfull file
• Interview with the owner, the operator and the local fire chiefon record
• The site walk, with photographs of every stained slab and floor drainone day

8.0 ft · Lean clay, CL

A finding is not a problem. It is a question the paper cannot answer.

The word the standard uses is a Recognised Environmental Condition. It does not mean the ground is contaminated. It means there is a documented reason to believe a release may have happened, and nothing in the file rules it out.

Roughly one Phase I in five here turns one up. Almost always it is one of the same six things, and knowing which one it is tells you immediately whether this is a two week delay or a reason to walk away from the deal.

• An underground storage tank with no closure reportmost common
• A dry cleaner in the building, any year before 1995most serious
• Floor drains in a repair bay going to an unknown outfallcommon
• Agricultural chemical mixing and loading on the parcelrural sites
• Fill of unknown origin brought in to level the lotcommon
• An upgradient neighbour with an open state case filenot your act, still your problem

16.0 ft · Saturated sand

Phase II is where somebody finally drills.

If the Phase I raises a condition, the only way past it is a sample. We push a direct-image probe on a track rig, which fits through a gate and does not need a road built to it, and we log continuously rather than at intervals so nothing thin gets missed.

• Soil borings, continuously logged and photographed4 to 12 typical
• Soil gas points, for solvent workas scoped
• Temporary monitoring wells, screened across the water table3 minimum
• Laboratory turnaround, Missouri certified10 business days
• Typical all-in Phase II, small commercial parcel$9,400 to $22,000

28.0 ft · Weathered shale

Closure is a letter from the state, not an opinion from us.

If sampling finds something, the objective stops being knowledge and becomes a document. In Missouri that document comes out of the Brownfields and Voluntary Cleanup Program, and it is the thing a lender, a title company and a future buyer will all ask for.

We write the work plan, run the remediation oversight, and take the file through to the No Further Action determination. What we will not do is tell you it is going to be quick. On a solvent site in this geology it is measured in years, and any consultant who says otherwise at the first meeting is selling you the meeting.

• BVCP application and work plan$4,200
• Tank removal oversight and closure report$3,800
• Quarterly groundwater monitoring, per event$2,600
• Typical petroleum site, application to No Further Action14 to 30 months
• Typical solvent site, same measure4 to 11 years