Environmental due diligence is on the brink of change. Some subtle. Others more substantive. The changes stem from EPA's mandate pursuant to the January 2002 Small Business Liability
Relief and Revitalization Act (the Federal Brownfields Law) to write the nation's first federal standards for conducting "All Appropriate Inquiries,” the process by which a property's potential for environmental contamination is investigated prior to purchase. Congress laid out a 10-step framework
for what constitutes AAI, and gave EPA two years to write the regulation (by January 11, 2004).
In April 2003, EPA tasked a broad-based 25-member stakeholder committee to write the rule using
a regulatory-negotiation (reg-neg) process under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).
On November 14, 2003, after more than 100 hours of discussion and debate, the reg-neg committee
reached consensus on a draft rule for the first federal standards and processes for conducting AAI. The final consensus draft rule__to be eventually codified in federal regulation, "Part 312 - Standards
for Conducting All Appropriate Inquiries"__follows the ASTM E 1527-00 standard in many areas, but it does add certain new levels of investigation. This article covers 10 key facts about the draft AAI rule (see
sidebar), including its applicability, requirements for Phase I professionals, and its most notable differences with current industry practice.

Our September

AAI Alert identified five key areas of the AAI rule for EPs to pay particular attention to when the long-awaited rule was promulgated. Now that the cloud of uncertainty about how EPA would respond to public comments has been replaced with the certainty of a final rule, below is a summary of EPA’s language in each of these key areas.

Based on EDR survey data, this worksheet provides industry averages of the time required to complete each AAI step. The worksheet will enable you to more easily calculate your price for an AAI-compliant Phase I, and be prepared to educate your clients about any rate increase in the context of the overall industry.