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Check Before You Buy

We recently completed a desk-top study for a site with no indication of it’s former use. A thorough, detailed data review uncovered the site’s past use as a petrol filling station. Our subsequent investigations uncovered several abandoned tanks and lots of nasty contamination.

Our report was compiled on behalf of a client looking to lease the site. As a result of our work, they were able to negotiate an indemnity against historical contamination and a contribution to the costs of dealing with future development costs associated with removing the soil contamination. A bullet dodged for our client.

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Do I Need to Check for Contamination?

This is probably the most common question we get asked by clients when they are buying a site. The simple answer is almost always yes. Just last week we were asked this exact question. Our client was considering buying a brownfield site for redevelopment and had been given a two year old report prepared by others which gave the site a clean bill of health. Fortunately, they took our advice and had us visit the site to take a look. The photograph shows what we found when we sampled one of the groundwater monitoring wells: ~170mm of free-phase hydrocarbons floating on the water surface. Far from the site being ‘clean’, it had major contamination issues.