Dirty Property

For this post, I thought I would continue on a subject that I began a couple of years ago on this blog:

Regulatory FAQ
?????????Regulatory FAQ II
and
Definition of Terms

Those posts described the basic steps associated with investigation of your standard corner retail gas station. For this post, let’s assume that you own an industrial facility of some sort. Either you owned the property and leased it to a widget manufacturer or you are the widget manufacturer and you own the property were you do your work. For whatever reason, the decision has been made to close the widget factory and sell the property. To do so, you will have to decommission all the various parts of the facility. A vital step in this process is what is called the, “Hazardous Materials Inventory”. This process will identify everything from mercury switches in thermostats and PCBs in light ballasts to large storage tanks and make recommendations for the appropriate method(s) for their decommissioning.

Let’s just say that a portion of this facility was used as a steam cleaning area with floor drains that conveyed the wash-down water into the sanitary sewer. Before the wash-down water went into the sanitary sewer, it flowed through a three-stage clarifier to allow the solids to settle out. All of this is a very common feature in industrial facilities. The Hazardous Materials Inventory identified the use of chlorinated solvents, specifically TCE, during the 1970s in various parts of the property including the steam cleaning area. Based on these findings, the recommendations are to advance soil borings in the area of the steam cleaning area, the floor drains, and the three-stage clarifier. The data collected from this investigation will allow us to evaluate how much soil (if any) around of the steam cleaning area is impacted with TCE and / or anything that was being washed off the widgets that were being steam cleaned.

Can’t wait to hear the next part? What do we do? How much do we have to dig out? How much will it cost? How long will it take to do all the work? Well, it takes a couple weeks to get data back from the lab and write the report. Check back next month!

I got an email today from the EPA and I think it is just funny. Apparently the EPA is suing the parent company of clothing company “The North Face”. I have done quite a bit of outdoor stuff including rock climbing, hiking, mountain biking and the like and I think that most of the “Outdoor clothing” stuff that is out there is just plain silly. I particularly thought it was strange, useless, and tasteless marketing when outdoor clothing companies started selling clothes that claimed to be UV resistant so that you don’t get sunburned, insect repellent, and fungus resistant so that it doesn’t start to stink after a few days of use. It turns out that aside from my opinion, these claims have legal implications and specifically are a violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. The specific problem that the EPA appears to have is when The North Face sells products with “Unsubstantiated antimicrobial properties”. I can understand this, but the antimicrobial properties are focused on stink and not necessarily on people’s health. I like that The North Face is getting challenged for this crazy marketing strategy, but I would prefer that the EPA get back to business on real issues because they definitely have bigger fish to fry.

‘The North Face’ Clothing Parent Company Facing Nearly $1M in Federal Fines Following Unsubstantiated Product Claims
SAN FRANCISCO – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has filed suit against San Leandro based VF Corporation for the alleged sale and distribution of unregistered pesticides through their retail company, The North Face.
The EPA maintains that The North Face made unsubstantiated public health claims regarding unregistered products, and their ability to control germs and pathogens — a violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Products discovered online and evidence found at The North Face retail store in San Francisco led the Agency to issue a complaint against the VF Corporation.
“The EPA takes very seriously its responsibility to enforce against companies that sell products with unsubstantiated antimicrobial properties,” said Katherine Taylor, associate director of the Communities and Ecosystems Division in EPA’s Pacific Southwest region. “Unverified public health claims can lead people to believe they are protected from disease-causing organisms when, in fact, they may not be.”
At issue were more than 70 styles of footwear that incorporated an AgION silver treated footbed. The company sold the products making unsubstantiated claims that the footwear would prevent disease-causing bacteria. Specifically, The North Face made the following public health claims about the footwear on-line and on product packaging:
• “AgION antimicrobial silver agent inhibits the growth of disease-causing bacteria”
• “Prevents bacterial and fungal growth”
• Continuous release of antimicrobial agents
After being contacted by EPA, The North Face stopped making claims that their footwear protects against germs, removed claims from their website, and revised their product packaging.
Products that kill or repel bacteria or germs are considered pesticides, and must be registered with the EPA prior to distribution or sale. The Agency will not register a pesticide until it has been tested to show that it will not pose an unreasonable risk when used according to the directions. Consumers should be careful to look for the EPA registration number printed on product labels, and to follow the directions for proper use.
For more information please visit: http://www.epa.gov/PR_Notices/pr2000-1.pdf

I have been asked to review a number of properties that are essentially raw land that has been graded and prepared for the development of tract homes. This has been going on essentially since November and December of 2008 when I posted the article about DR Horton selling off a number of their properties a near fire sale prices. Link to Story

It appears as though these properties, predominantly in the outskirts of the populated areas of Southern California, are changing hands quite rapidly. While very little actual construction appears to be taking place right now, when the residential market returns to, “Normal” I would expect the people who hold this property will be able to reap tremendous rewards.

The environmental concerns of these properties are usually few since the larger properties tend to be on raw land, but we have come across a few that are on properties that were formally industrial properties or abandoned oil fields of some sort. These properties have additional requirements prior to development that many times makes the deal go sour because the purchase price is so low and there is no short-term return on investment to pay the costs of remediation.

As many of you may already know, the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) publishes standards for everything from Eye Protectors for Field Hockey (F2713-09) to the test method for kinematic viscosity of transparent and opaque liquids (and calculation of dynamic viscosity) (D445-06). One of the many various ASTM standards that I work with is the Standard Practice for Description and Identification of Soils (Visual-Manual Procedure) (D2488-09a). This method includes the Unified Soil Classification System (USCS) classification system for soils and expands upon it for the purposes of Environmental Assessment and Risk Management.

Environmental Assessment and Risk Management Standards

ASTM has released a new version of the D-2488 Standard Practice for Description and Identification of Soils (Visual-Manual Procedure). This is to replace the previous versions, D-2488-06 and D-2488-00; originally published as D-2488-66 T. I will be evaluating this standard over the next couple of weeks and will post my thoughts on it at that time. If you would like to download and review the standard for yourself, feel free to click the link below to go to the ASTM website.

http://www.astm.org/Standards/D2488.htm

As I have previously stated on this blog, I graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a Soil Science degree and Environmental Management concentration. One of my friends from those days is Pablo Paster; I knew that he was studying engineering and was interested in the environmental field, but most of our conversations focused around the mountains we had climbed or would one day climb. As it turns out, Pablo has built a practice providing services to industries that wish to proactively reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. I encourage everyone who is interested to check out his blog, and contact him with any further questions.

Pablo Paster is the vice president of Greenhouse Gas Management at ClimateCHECK, an North-America based greenhouse gas services and solutions company. Pablo has a Manufacturing Engineering degree from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, and an MBA in Sustainable Management from the Presidio School of Management in San Francisco. He advises major corporations on greenhouse gas measurement and management as well as developing greenhouse gas quantification methodologies for new clean technologies.

His blog can be found on Treehugger.com a website published and managed by Discovery Communications who is best know for their cable channel, the Discovery Channel.

The Underground Storage Tank (UST) Orphan Site Cleanup Fund Program (OSCF) administered by the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) through the federal stimulus program, the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (The Stimulus Package) is now accepting applications from eligible applicants that meet established requirements and are ready to move forward with cleanup activities. The RWQCB will accept pplications for the OSCF program on an on-going basis. The SWRCB has provided a Downloadable OSCF application.

OSCF Application

Program Information

Additional Program Information

Commercial lending is a mess right now, that much is not news. It isn’t going to get any better for quite some time, that much is likely not news to you either; but it appears to be getting worse before it is getting better. I heard the other day that the majority of new loans are requiring 25-30% down and most lenders are highly unlikely to write a loan on a property that has environmental concerns. That means that you need to bring a lot of money into a deal to buy a property that is a very low risk, and properties that have some up-side (either environmental or otherwise) just aren’t going to get loans. That’s a pretty dim outlook.

The first quarter was strong for many banks, but this quarter appears to be a pretty difficult one so far for many of the lenders out there. Specifically, Citigroup and Bank of America were mentioned in many news articles over the past couple of days saying that both the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are making them raise additional capital to further stabilize their balance sheets. Some believe that Bank of America will be filing a rebuttal to the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, but no-one seems to know what that will consist of at this time. I guess we will hear in a couple of days, but I’m not going to get ready to write an offer anytime soon.

One thing is for certain, without the backing of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, or at the very least until these questions are resolved, it will be very difficult for these banks to source the capital (from federal funds or otherwise) they need to originate new loans.

I hope you’re ready to write an all-cash offer or the seller is willing to carry the loan, the banks appear to have problems of their own right now.

I get questions quite often about dry cleaners because I do so much work at shopping centers that contain dry cleaners.  Despite the name, traditional dry cleaning operations do, in fact, use a liquid in the cleaning process.  Most dry cleaning businesses use tetrachloroethelene (PCE).  Historically, other chlorinated solvents were used including Stoddard solvent and kerosene, but these were a bit too flammable. While PCE may not be as flammable as kerosene, it does present quite a problem in regards to air quality, it has to be disposed of as a hazardous waste, and has a tenancy to leach into soil and groundwater causing a tremendous headache for the property owner.

There is one other alternative to wrinkled clothes, a Dow Chemical product know as Siloxane D5 or “GreenEarth”. According to Dow, the chemical is silicon based and degrades to sand, water, and carbon dioxide. Sounds like a good alternative, but I have heard statistics stating that as many as 80% of dry cleaners are still using PCE rather than newer products such as GreenEarth.

The U.S. House of Representative’s version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the economic stimulus plan includes A number of programs directed toward the redevelopment of Brownfield sites.  The specific direction of these funds includes:

• Superfund Hazardous Waste Cleanup: $800 million to clean up hazardous and toxic waste sites that threaten health and the environment. EPA has 1,255 sites on its National Priority List, selected based on a hazard ranking system. There are many Superfund sites ready for construction, but not funded due to budget shortfalls and over 600 sites with ongoing construction that could be accelerated.

• Leaking Underground Storage Tanks: $200 million for enforcement and cleanup of petroleum leaks from underground storage tanks at approximately 1,600 additional sites. There are an estimated 116,000 sites with the potential to contaminate important water supplies.

• Closed Military Bases: $300 million for cleanup activities at closed military installations allowing local communities to redevelop these properties for productive use. The Department estimates that there is a $3.5 billion environmental cleanup backlog at bases closed during previous BRAC rounds.

• Brownfields: $100 million for competitive grants for evaluation and cleanup of former industrial and commercial sites – turning them from problem properties to productive community use. Last year EPA was only able to fund 37% of Brownfields applications.

Federal, state and Local programs are already in place to receive these funds and have been lacking funding for some time now.  I would expect that the revitalization of these programs and this influx of funding will go a long way to making many redevelopment projects on impacted properties pencil out a lot more often.   These programs could also help alleviate some of the funding issues associated with obtaining a loan on impacted or Brownfield properties, whether that loan is for a purchase, a bridge loan, or a construction loan.

Additionally, a “Buy American” policy requires that iron and steel used in construction and repair projects funded under the bill be produced in the United States unless found to be prohibitively expensive.

The UCLA Anderson School of Business released it’s Commercial Real Estate forecast last week and the news is not very optimistic, but I suspect it is realistic.  Essentially, the report states that the markets are likely to adjust in 2010, but until that point, things will continue to be depressed.

Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast California Commercial Real Estate Survey Reveals California Office Markets will Continue to Deteriorate Through 2011

Turning point in the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets expected in 2010

LOS ANGELES — In the wake of the recession and the freezing up of financial markets for office space development, developers and investors believe that office markets will worsen between now and 2011, according to the latest Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast Commercial Real Estate Survey and Index Research Project. The survey now includes the East Bay and Silicon Valley office markets in addition to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orange County and San Diego.  The survey, conducted for the fourth time in two years, compares the panel’s forecast of the market three years hence with today’s market. “The unexpected autumnal freeze in commercial real estate credit markets and the precipitous drop in retail sales changed the outlook for new office projects dramatically,” said Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist, UCLA Anderson Forecast, and author of the survey results report. “The dynamics in the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets indicate a turning point at the end of 2010.  For the Silicon Valley it appears that 2011 is a turning point, but the data is less clear.  For the balance of the markets, the surveys clearly indicate a longer term adjustment process.” For a copy of the latest Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast California Commercial Real Estate Survey and Index Research Project, please visit www.uclaforecast.com. The Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast California Commercial Real Estate Survey and Index Research Project polled a panel of California real estate professionals in the office space and investment market, and asked a series of questions on various aspects of the commercial real estate market. It was initiated by Allen Matkins in 2006, furtherance of their interest in improving the quality of current information and forecasts of commercial real estate. With the office market coverage now complete, the next survey will focus on the Industrial Space market at the June 2009 UCLA Anderson Forecast Conference.