Pennsylvania Information

1. How is Pennsylvania's Voluntary Cleanup Program organized?

Answer: The Chief of the Land Recycling & Cleanup Division reports to the Director of the Land Recycling & Waste Management Bureau, but has direct access to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of DEP.  (Other divisions reporting to the Bureau Director are Municipal & Residual Waste Management, and Waste Minimization & Recycling.)  There are also six regional offices, each with an Environmental Cleanup Program group (made up of 21 to 41 people per office).

2. Which sites and individuals are eligible to participate in Pennsylvania's VCP?

Answer: The only individuals who are not eligible to participate are those guilty of true negligence or criminal practices and those who are the subject of enforcement action.

Most sites must apply Act 2 standards.  Exceptions are NPL sites and releases from mining operations.  Public review requirements and other procedures established for State Priorities List sites still apply, but Act 2 standards govern.  Similarly, all petroleum storage tank cleanups apply Act 2 standards, but Act 2's more aggressive notification requirements (such as Notice of Intent to Remediate) do not apply. 

Releases from operating landfills may apply only "background" or "statewide health" standards.  Closed landfills may apply any Act 2 standards.

3. How does Pennsylvania's novel "automatic" liability release system work?

Answer: Cleanup volunteers in Pennsylvania are automatically released from liability by operation of law after satisfying VCP requirements, if DEP does not object within a specified 60- or 90-day period.  DEP almost never allows the time limit to expire without sending out a formal approval letter, documenting the scope and basis for the approval.  Similarly, if a cleanup is deficient, DEP strives to communicate this to the volunteer expeditiously--so that any deficiencies can, hopefully, be rectified withint he original approval timeframe.

4. Pennsylvania has a very unusual reopener that allows a liability release to be reopened where an original remedy relied on institutional or engineering controls, but technology later evolved to the point that more permanent and complete remedies have become economically feasible.  How has this worked?

Answer: We have not seen the need to reopen any cleanups thus far on this basis.  

5. Which of Pennsylvania's brownfield financial incentives have been the most successful?

Answer: Without a doubt, the most successful program has been the Department of Community and Economic Development's (DCED's) grant program to municipalities and non-profits for both assessments and remediation.  75% funding is provided.  Two percent loans are also provided to private parties.  The Commonwealth has dispensed $51-$52 million under this program.

In the Key Sites program, 4 consultants were put on retainer to do interim responses and containment for sites.

6. Why does Pennsylvania law require interpretations of geologic and hydrogeologic data to be prepared by a professional Pennsylvania-licensed geologist?

Answer: Because this if often some of the most important environmental data.

The closest we come to Massachusetts' LSP program is our Environmental Guardian Trust program, which we hope will have running on a regular basis shortly.  (It was operated initially as a pilot program until Feb. 2002.)  It will privatize post-remediation responsibilities, such as overseeing the long-term stewardship of  Institutional and Engineering Controls.  It will operate on a fee-for-service basis as a non-profit entity.  It would not be necessary for DEP to fund the Guardian Trust in the future as fees build up over time.

7. Does Pennsylvania law require any sort of inventory or list of brownfield sites?

Answer: We have a database of ongoing or completed cleanups. 

We also provide Brownfields Inventory Grants (BIG) to encourage municipalities to designate sites for inclusion on Pennsylvania's PA SiteFinder online database.  (A municipality receives $1,000 for each site placed in PA SiteFinder, up to a total of $50,000 per municipality.)  We have facilitated 30-35 brownfield real estate deals from this website.

8. What new brownfield-related reforms would you like to see in the Pennsylvania program?

Answer: The program is working very well.  We will be paying more attention to oversight of institutional and engineering controls, including posting sites with such controls on our website.

9. Do you envision any problems that will be caused by the need to implement the new Brownfields Revitalization Act?

Answer: No. Our existing database effort should meet the BRA's "inventory" requirement.