Historical Information Gatherers

News!

Know your Illinois database information!

While researching our Illinois regulatory database report, it came to our attention that there is a database being misrepresented as an Illinois equivalent to the NPL by another data provider.  

The following is a short article provided by Mr. Robert O'Hara with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency discussing this problem.

Written by Mr. Robert O'Hara and reprinted with his permission
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
August 27, 2010

"Everyone should be cautioned that radius maps for Illinois facilities produced by one commercial environmental information service routinely contain extremely spurious information. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency has never maintained or promulgated an instrument known as or titled the Category List (or CAT List) or the State Hazardous Waste Sites list (or SHWS list) of prioritized facilities. These terms, as defined in the executive summaries of a number of these radius maps, have absolutely no basis in Illinois statutes, regulations or the historical administrative practices of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

The company producing these maps has been repeatedly informed that these representations are false. At best, such attributions are entirely meaningless to regulatory agencies. At worst, they may be defamatory, providing the basis for a claim of slander of title. Do not cite or repeat any reference to the Illinois Category List, CAT List, State Hazardous Waste Sites list, or SHWS list. Copies of these radius maps which are attached or appended to reports should be redacted to remove any such references.

Allusions to “CERCLIS-equivalent” lists of Illinois “priority sites” may have some foundation in Illinois regulations, however badly misunderstood and misrepresented by the producer of the radius maps. In July 1985, Illinois adopted regulations for administration of the State Remedial Action Priorities List (“SRAPL”). Sites scoring above 10.0 on the Federal Hazard Ranking System (“HRS”), as it existed at the time, were eligible for listing. Sites scoring 28.5 or above on the HRS were routinely proposed for the National Priorities List, although they were also eligible for the SRAPL. In subsequent years, amendments to 35 Illinois Administrative Code Part 860 added four groups of sites to the SRAPL, bringing the final number of listed sites to 37. The regulations implementing the SRAPL were voided in 1992 by an Illinois Appellate Court and all sites were expunged from the SRAPL. The regulations were effectively repealed in 2001. Remediation of these sites devolved on to other programs not affected by the ruling."

 

Regulatory Database Radius Reports are Available for Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin!

HIG is working to be your first choice for one-stop-shop historical and environmental database information. In order to do so, we have teamed up with GeoSearch to provide our clients with regulatory database radius reports for Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

What makes a GeoSearch Radius Report the first choice for many environmental professionals?

  • Concise, accurate and user-friendly database information presented in an easy to read format.
  • The listings are grouped together by property on the maps and in the summary of listings; a real time saver.
  • Very few unmapped and mis-plotted sites, another time saver for you.