The land has a history. The records hold part of it.

What we read

Federal facility and compliance records, Superfund and hazardous-waste listings, state records of underground tank incidents, inactive hazardous sites, landfills, brownfields, pending environmental permits, mapped critical habitat, and state records of conservation land and easements.

What the record establishes

• Facilities and incidents recorded on the tract or near it.
• Regulatory interests that attach to the land.
• Permit activity in progress nearby.
• Conservation ownership or easements that could limit use.

What it cannot establish

A clean Phase I assessment. The absence of contamination. The absence of a protected species. Clearance for cultural resources. What an unrecorded past use left behind.

Where public data misleads

• A service that is down looks like an empty result. A retired or failing database returns nothing, and nothing can be misread as “none.”
• Conservation maps show ownership, not wildlife. A map of managed lands says who holds an interest. It says nothing about which species are present.
• Nearby is not on-site, and the reverse. A record next door may never have touched the tract. A spill on the tract may be filed under a neighbor’s address.

Who confirms it

An environmental professional performs the assessment and the fieldwork. Environmental counsel, species specialists, a title attorney, and the reviewing agencies settle their own questions.

What we hand you

Each record found, where it sits relative to the boundary, the conservation interests on record, and a recommendation on whether the history calls for an assessment before anything else.

Questions

Is a database search the same as a Phase I?

No. A Phase I includes a site visit, interviews, and a review of historical use by a qualified professional. Our search tells you whether the record already raises a flag.