The West Virginia Land Stewardship Corporation Act

  

The West Virginia Legislature is considering adoption of the Land Stewardship Corporation Act,  SB 342 and HB 2590, in order to promote  the productive reuse of idle and underutilized commercial, industrial, and mining properties. Many sites in West Virginia are subject to long-term remediation obligations that make them unattractive to buyers.  The LSCA is intended to make them more palatable to developers  in the following fashion:

The Voluntary Land Stewardship Program would allow remediation parties and owners of sites which have been remediated or closed under a state or federal environmental program (including brownfields, underground storage tanks, closed landfills, open dumps, hazardous waste sites, and former mining sites), upon payment of an appropriate fee, to transfer to the Land Stewardship Corporation the responsibility for certain site maintenance and remediation obligations.  Site owners could retain ownership while contracting with the Corporation to assume long-term duties, such as groundwater monitoring or landfill cap maintenance, that are required under an environmental remediation program. 

      The State Certified Sites Program would establish an inventory of sites that are ready for redevelopment and/or construction within twelve months and certify them as “project-ready” for a specific industry profile in order to enhance economic development efforts within West Virginia.  The Board (see below) can issue a site certification if it determines that the decision ready document has been prepared and completed in accordance with the requirements that are otherwise to be established by the Land Stewardship Corporation.  Proposed W.Va. Code §31-21-9. 

            A Land Bank Program would assist State and/or local government efforts in economic development efforts by accepting formerly used or developable properties into the bank and preparing the properties so they can be conveyed to other parties to locate or expand businesses and create or retain jobs in the State. 

A Non-Profit Corporation would be established provide for the long-term operation and maintenance of certain sites.  Oversight would be provided by a Board of Directors appointed by the Governor.  Liabilities, including any environmental liabilities, would not pass to the Corporation by its acquisition of title.  WV DEP would retain all of its rights with regard to access to contaminated property held by the Corporation, and the Corporation may not transfer contaminated property until DEP determines that any immediate threats are remediated and/or eliminated

Where sorts of sites might benefit?  Here's one that the DEP  has just  given notice of::

Pennzoil Quaker State Co., (dba Shell Oil Products) is working with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to remediate property along State Route 36, near Wallback in Clay County.

 Pennzoil has entered the Stockley (Valley Fork) Station into the DEP’s Voluntary Remediation Program (VRP). The 0.75-acre facility is believed to have been constructed by Eureka Pipeline Co. and contains three buildings (a pump building, a driver building, and an office building) and two above-ground storage tanks (ASTs). The site is an active oil gathering facility, where crude oil from nearby production wells is transferred to the ASTs, with the stored oil periodically transferred to a pipeline which runs through the area.
 Pennzoil is working with the DEP’s Office of Environmental Remediation (OER) to address environmental conditions at the site which may have resulted from historic operations at the facility.
 The OER’s voluntary remediation agreement with Pennzoil includes provisions for identifying human health and ecological risks associated with potential future uses of the site in order to establish appropriate cleanup standards.
 A final report will be submitted to the OER for review to confirm that work meets all applicable remediation standards.
 The OER encourages voluntary clean-ups of contaminated sites, as well as redevelopment of abandoned and under- utilized properties, in the hope of counteracting the lack of growth on sites with contamination or perceived contamination. The OER sets applicable remediation standards and confirms that the site maintains these standards.
 Typical DEP enforcement actions, as well as liability under environmental laws, are limited while sites are being remediated. The Voluntary Remediation Program gives developers the ability to redevelop sites with existing industrial infrastructure at a lower price, and provides financial incentives to invest in Brownfields.
 Questions should be directed to either Pasupathy Ramanan, WV DEP-OER, 2031 Pleasant Valley Road, Fairmont, WV 26554
(304) 368-2000 ext. 3730 or to Steven Stinger, Project Manager, URS Corporation, 12420 Milestone Drive, Suite 150, Germantown, MD 20876 (301) 820-3149.