Deals in the Era of SRRA

The phrase “buyer beware” has become a well-known mantra for purchasers of commercial or industrial property in New Jersey with known or potential environmental contamination. With the recent adoption of the Site Remediation Reform Act, P.L. 2009, c.60, which requires remediation activities to be overseen by private environmental contractors acting in a neutral capacity as quasi-agents of the state, and which adopts changes in existing law that will automatically trigger liability upon a responsible party’s knowledge of contamination, that mantra might soon be re-phrased as “buyer and seller beware.”

In either case, contracting parties must proceed with greater caution than ever in how they interact with consultants anointed as “Licensed Site Remediation Professionals,” as well as each other, lest they find themselves saddled with unexpected liabilities for remedial costs over which they will have less control than before.

Designed to break a backlog of some 20,000 sites currently being remediated under the oversight of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, SRRA provides for the transfer of site remediation oversight responsibility for most sites to specially licensed private environmental consultants, termed LSRPs under the law. The NJDEP is directed under the law to establish an LSRP program that will license and audit consultants who will perform site remediation projects without NJDEP oversight.