Institutional controls are designed to reduce or eliminate potential exposure to certain chemicals and ensure that "no significant risk" is posed to human health and the environment. They take a wide variety of forms, such as easements, restrictive covenants, equitable servitudes, environmental covenants, zoning, building permits, contractual agreements and more. Implementing Institutional Controls at Brownfields and Other Contaminated Sites is the most comprehensive and in-depth legal examination of these tools. It provides a thorough grounding to the history and current use of all types of institutional controls, while at the same time its articles, written by experts in the field, offer a state-of-the-art review of some of the developing tools that can be used in brownfields redevelopment.
The authors consider the substantial strides that have been made over the past decade to improve regulators' and practitioners' awareness and understanding of institutional control issues, especially the Uniform Environmental Covenants Act (UCEA), how most states are handling institutional control issues, and other planning tools such as EPA's use of five-year reviews under Superfund, Land Use Control Implementation Plans, and state and local innovations.