Land Use and Institutional Controls

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Land-Use Controls (LUCs) also known as "institutional controls," are defined broadly as legal measures that limit human exposure by restricting activity, use, and access to properties with residual contamination. This site provides a clearinghouse of information on LUCs for the use of all stakeholder groups.

The LUC WebRing explores the virtual community around the issue of risk-based cleanups and the land use controls that make such cleanups possible. The LUC WebRing links governmental online institutional control tracking systems, academic land use control research, commercial land use control services, nongovernmental organization land use control information, and environmentally-impaired real estate and lending services. The LUC WebRing is managed by the International City/Council Management Association (ICMA) and supported by USEPA.

State and tribal response programs play a significant role in cleaning up brownfields. To learn more about specifics, visit state and tribal response programs. To see state and tribal programs with institutional control tracking on a public website, visit state and tribal response programs with ICs.

U.S. EPA Institutional Controls (ICs) are administrative or legal controls that help minimize the potential for human exposure to contamination or protect the integrity of a remedy. This site provides IC Guidance, workshop information and collected data elements.
Presentation and materials for the Institutional Controls Roundtable and Training - April 4-6, 2006, Tucson, AZ are available at:
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/policy/ic/roundtable.htm
The purpose of the roundtable was to exchange information related to Institutional Controls with experts and practitioners across the United States.

Other US EPA Guidance Documents for Institutional Controls
Estimating the Cost of Institutional Controls, establishes a framework of IC activities and the timeframes for these actions that regulators and land owners can consider in estimating costs. The guide divides the IC process into various steps, including: planning, record-keeping, monitoring, inspection and enforcement. The steps are also categorized by how frequently they must occur, whether annually or periodically, or only as an initial measure.
http://www.rff.org/rff/Documents/RFF-Report-costs.pdf
US DOE Use of Institutional Controls in a CERCLA Baseline Risk Assessment (PDF) (2 pp, 31K)
December 1992

Uniform Environmental Covenants Act
In 2003, the Uniform Law Commissioners have promulgated the Uniform Environmental Covenants Act to overcome the inadequate common law rules.
The statutory legal mechanism it creates is called an “environmental covenant.” Covenants are generally recognized in the common law as a means of conveying restrictions on use of land. The environmental covenant relies on the common law base, but re-creates it for the specific purpose of controlling the use of contaminated real estate, perpetually if necessary, while allowing that real estate to be conveyed from one person to another subject to those controls.

Uniform Law Commissioners
From this web site the user must select the Act Title "Environmental Covenants Act" and press search. The user does not have to select a State.
Long Term Stewardship Task Force Report and the Development of Implementation Options for the Task Force Recommendations
Long-term stewardship (LTS) applies to sites and properties where long-term management of contaminated environmental media is necessary to protect human health and the environment over time. EPA formed the LTS Task Force in 2004 to evaluate the state of long-term stewardship across its various waste cleanup programs. The Task Force released this report to address a variety of challenges facing EPA and its partners responsible for ensuring LTS.