| It's important for homeowners to be aware of any environmental liabilities that could be associated with their properties. Every homeowner—or his heirs—will someday be a home seller, and most any prospective buyer may reasonably be concerned about potential environmental hazards.
Many buyers will want to know about things like underground tanks, large-scale pesticide use, hazardous waste dump sites, landfills and other potential environmental concerns. They may want to know if any nearby property owners have been fined by the government for failing to meet environmental standards.
While it was once necessary to complete a costly site investigation in order to discover such information, now a number of on-line environmental databases are available at relatively low cost. Anyone can access reports on otherwise hard-to-detect environmental issues. These databases make it possible to obtain listings of hazards near a property, or spills and violations attributed to nearby businesses.
For some homeowners, it might seem easier and less costly to bury their proverbial heads in the sand and ignore environmental issues, but this tactic could be costly. Such environmental hazards, if they are not disclosed to a buyer as part of a future sale, could result in lawsuits and substantial financial damages against the former owner. Even a former owner who didn't know about the environmental hazards in his area could be found liable if a buyer could show that the owner should have known about the hazards.
It's important to note, however, that information in on-line environmental databases pertains only to matters that are part of a public record. Information about environmental hazards that have not been discovered by a governmental agency or official, or been the subject of a lawsuit, or covered in the press, will not be included.
In Oregon, the Department of Environmental Quality compiles historical information about properties throughout the state. Among other things, this information includes a registry of sites where contamination has been discovered and sites where underground tanks have been decommissioned.
Other reputable databases that Oregonians can access include VISTA Information Systems, based in San Diego, Calif., which allows Internet users to register and search their data bank for free, and E Data Resources, based in Southport, Conn. These services are relatively inexpensive, but can provide information that is priceless in its benefit to homeowners and home buyers. |
