Senator Cohen Welcomes New Law To Deal With Hazardous Waste Sites

Press release from CGA:

Oct. 6, 2020

State Senator Christine Cohen (D-Guilford) today led Senate passage of a new law designed to change the way polluted properties in Connecticut are cleaned up and sold from one owner to the next, and the way these properties are then put back to use for local economic development.

Sen. Cohen joined a bipartisan coalition of her Senate colleagues today to give final approval to "AN ACT CONCERNING VARIOUS REVISIONS TO THE PROPERTY TRANSFER LAW AND SPILL-BASED REMEDIATION OF CERTAIN HAZARDOUS WASTE." The bill now heads to Governor Lamont for his signature into law.

The bill will transition Connecticut from its current and overly cumbersome "transfer-based" approach to property remediation (which requires the disclosure of environmental conditions only when a piece of property or a business is sold), to a so-called "release-based approach," where the person who finds or spills oil, petroleum, chemicals, liquids, gases or other hazardous waste on their property, cleans it up.

Connecticut is the only state in the nation still using the so-called "transfer-based" approach.

"Today we took the opportunity to align Connecticut with 48 other states for the good of our economy and our environment. The results in other states have proven that, with a released-based approach, more hazardous releases are cleaned up and there are fewer problems transferring properties from one owner to the next," said Sen. Cohen, who is Senate Chair of the Environment Committee and Vice-Chair of the Commerce Committee. "It's not often that I get to meld my two favorite topics – the environment and business growth – into one consequential piece of legislation, but I believe this bill will get us moving ahead on economic revitalization while protecting Connecticut's soil, water and air at the same time."

Sen. Cohen also noted that there are 134 different sites subject to the Transfer Act in her Senate district: 73 sites in Branford, 25 in Guilford, 17 in North Branford, 14 in Madison and 5 in Durham.

Today's Senate action repairs Connecticut's decades-old "Transfer Act," which was developed in 1985 with the simultaneous goals of addressing environmental pollution while encouraging the economic redevelopment and re-use of these polluted properties.

Unfortunately, the clean-ups can be costly and cumbersome. For instance, properties that never had a spill may end up within the confines of the old law because of their proximity to another polluted facility. Rather than clean-ups taking place and transfers taking place, the owners often simply abandoned these locations for a lack of practicable remediation.

As a result, while more than 4,000 properties in Connecticut have made their way into the Transfer Act, only about 25 percent of them are cleaned up and transferred, resulting in an estimated $175 million loss in potential tax revenue to cities and towns.

Under this new legislation, the Transfer Act will sunset and the new release-based remediation system will be employed once the regulations for the same are promulgated.

This press release was produced by CGA. The views expressed here are the author's own.