The NYC Office of Environmental Remediation just announced that it has a little over $100K to award for petroleum assessments this summer. The source of the grant money is the brownfield revolving loan fund that was awarded by EPA to OER under section 104(k) of CERCLA. The federally-funded grant may be used for phase 1 or phase 2 investigations. There is no requirement that the applicant enroll in the OER voluntary cleanup program (VCP) to receive the federally funded assessment.
OER hopes the money will be used to fund assessments at former gas station sites or other sites impacted by petroleum USTs that will be redeveloped for affordable housing. However, the funding is no specifically limited to affordable housing projects.
Because the petroleum assessments will be federally-funded, there are fairly stringent eligibility requirements. First, the current owner of the property and immediate prior owner of parcel cannot have caused or be responsible for the petroleum contamination. However, if the immediate prior owner was responsible for the spill, the applicant could be still apply for the grant if the applicant can show that the immediate prior owner is insolvent at the time of the application. In addition, the property could not have been previously owned by the City.
Second, the applicant will also have to have performed an all appropriate inquiry at the eligible site.
Third, the work (phase I or Phase II) must be performed by one of OER’s retainer contractors and not by a site owner’s or a developer’s environmental consultant.
Finally, the work itself must be completed by Sept 30. What this means, given the time required for EPA approval of a Phase II workplan and QAAP, the work needs to be done very fast to have field work and lab analysis completed by Sept 30.