Acronym Guide

AAI - All Appropriate Inquiry; purchaser’s investigation into past ownership and uses of the property\

AOC - Area of Concern

ARRA - American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

AST - Aboveground Storage Tank

AUL - Activity and Use Limitation (also called institutional control); legal or administrative restriction on the use of or access to a site in order to reduce potential exposure to hazardous substances

BAC - Brownfield Advisory Committee

BF - Brownfields

CA - Corrective Action

CAG - Community Advisory Group

CDBG - Community Development Block Grant

CEA - Classification Exception Area

CERCLA - Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act; enacted by Congress in 1980, creating the tax that funds Superfund, and outlining liability for contaminated land.

CMMP - Contaminated Media Management Plan

CNTS - Covenant Not to Sue

COC - Certificate of Completion

COC - Contaminant of Concern; chemical or substance that has the potential to adversely affect humans due to its concentration, distribution, and mode of toxicity

COG - Council of Governments

COI - Constituent of Interest / Contaminant of Interest

COPC - Contaminant of Potential Concern

CWA - Clean Water Act; 1972 act that regulates discharges of pollutants into US waters

EC - Engineering Control; physical modification of a site such as capping, slurry walls, or point of use water treatment, to reduce potential of exposure to hazardous substances

ECHO - Enforcement and Compliance History Online; EPA site that provides compliance monitoring, enforcement, and demographic data for approximately 800,000 active regulated facilities

ECSI(S) - Environmental Cleanup Site Information (System); database of brownfield sites maintained by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality

EPA - Environmental Protection Agency; federal agency whose mission is to protect human health and the environment

EPCRA - Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, (SARA Title III); established requirements for hazardous chemical emergency planning and reporting, and increased public access to information on chemicals at individual facilities, their uses, and releases into the environment

ERNS - Emergency Response Notification System; EPA list of reported CERCLA hazardous substance releases

FS - Feasibility Study; summary of site and contamination, cleanup standards, applicable laws, and remedial options

HOT - Heating Oil Tank

HSDB - Hazardous Substances Data Bank; files on the National Library of Medicine's Toxicology Data Network (TOXNET) focusing on the toxicology of potentially hazardous chemicals, with information on human exposure, industrial hygiene, emergency handling procedures, environmental fate, regulatory requirements, etc

IC - Institutional Control; legal or administrative restriction on the use of or access to a site to reduce potential exposure to hazardous substances

ICP - Independent Cleanup Program; path through the Voluntary Cleanup Program for low to medium priority sites

ICs - Institutional Controls

IDEA - Integrated Data for Enforcement Analysis; environmental performance data on EPA-regulated facilities, with copies of the Agency's air, water, hazardous waste and enforcement source data systems

LDR - Land Disposal Restrictions; EPA program establishing hazardous waste protocol and treatment requirements to make waste safe for land disposal

LLP - Landowner Liability Protection; protections established under the Brownfields Amendments for certain brownfield owners

MASC - Maximum Allowable Soil Concentration

MCL(G) - Maximum Contaminant Level (Goal)

MOU - Memorandum of Understanding

MSL- Mine Scared Lands

MW - Monitoring Well

NFA - No Further Action letter; issued by a state level environmental agency when the site has been remediated in accordance with applicable requirements and the Remedial Action Work Plan

NFRAP - No Further Remedial Action Planned; decision made by EPA, following a preliminary assessment, that a site does not pose a significant risk and requires no further activity under CERCLA

NOV - Notice of Violation; letter written as part of an administrative action

NPDES - National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System; permitting program under the Clean Water Act that regulates point source discharges to surface water

NPL - National Priorities List; a list of the most serious uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites under Superfund

OPA - Oil Pollution Act of 1990; addresses oil pollution liability and compensation for the Federal government to direct and manage oil spill cleanups

OPRA- Open Public Records Act, allows access to government records

OSRTI - Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation; EPA office that manages Superfund

OSWER - Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, EPA

OUST - Office of Underground Storage Tanks, EPA

PA - Preliminary Assessment; process of collecting and reviewing available information about a known or suspected waste site or release (similar to a Phase 1)

PAH - Polynuclear / Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon; compounds found in fuels, oils, and creosote, including benzene, toluene, and the xylenes

PCB - Polychlorinated Biphenyl; toxic, persistent chemical used in electrical transformers and capacitors for insulating purposes, and in gas pipeline systems as a lubricant; sale and new use of PCBs were banned by law in 1979

PERC or PCE - Tetrachloroethylene (also called perchloroethylene); manufactured chemical widely used for dry cleaning, metal-degreasing, and chemical production

POL - Petroleum Oils and Lubricants; contain contaminants such as benzene, toluene and xylene

PPA - Prospective Purchaser Agreement; prospective purchaser of contaminated property will agree, before acquiring the property, to contribute a certain amount of money or effort toward cleaning it up. In return, the appropriate environmental regulatory agency will agree to limit the purchaser’s future liability, even if new areas of historical contamination are discovered after the property is purchased

PRG - Preliminary Remediation Goal

PRP - Potentially Responsible Party

QAPP - Quality Assurance Project Plan; written between Phase I and Phase II ESAs to state project objectives and monitoring design, procedures for generating data, and data quality measurements

RA - Remedial Action; construction, operation, and implementation of the final cleanup remedy until confirmatory sampling and analysis indicate that cleanup levels have been reached

RACM/T - Reasonably Available Control Measures / Technology

RAO - Remedial Action Operation; operation, maintenance, and monitoring support requirements for a Remedial Action

RAR- Remedial Action Report; documents completion of a remdial action in accordance with the RAWP

RASR- Remedial Action Selection Report; document that evaluates possible clean up options and selects a preferred remedy

RAWP (or RAW)- Remedial Action Work Plan, document that describes the clean up approach

RBCA - Risk Based Corrective Action; the process that results from using risk based decision making (often for USTs)

RBDM - Risk Based Decision Making; a process during which decisions are made about sites contaminated by underground storage tank releases according to the actual risk each site poses to human health and the environment

RCRA - Resource Conservation and Recovery Act; federal statute that regulates the generation, transportation, storage, treatment and disposal of hazardous waste; includes the Corrective Action and Underground Storage Tank Programs

RCRA BF - Brownfield Site that falls under RCRA Regulation

RD- Remedial Design; detailed plans and specifications suitable to construct a remedial action

REC - Recognized Environmental Conditions

RI/FS - Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study; an in-depth study to (1) determine the nature and extent of contamination at a Superfund site, (2) establish site cleanup criteria, (3) identify preliminary alternatives for remedial action, and (4) support technical and cost analyses of alternatives

RIP - Remedy In Place; indication that a final remedial action has been constructed and implemented, and is operating according to the Remedial Design

RLF - Revolving Loan Fund grant of the EPA

RME - Reasonable Maximum Exposure; maximum exposure expected to occur at a site

ROD - Record of Decision; primary legal document at a site, which sets forth EPA's selected remedy as well as the factors that led to its selection

RP - Responsible Party

RPM - Remedial Project Manager; EPA or State official responsible for overseeing on-site remedial action

SARA - Superfund Amendment and Reauthorization Act; 1986 act amending CERCLA to increase the size of the Superfund trust fund

SBA - Small Business Administration

SBLRBRA - Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act

SI - Site Investigation (Phase 2 Study)

SRI Grant - Superfund Redevelopment Initiative; EPA grant to local gov’t of up to $100,000 for reuse assessment and public outreach

TAG - Technical Assistance Grant; EPA grant program that provides funds for citizens’ groups at a Superfund site to hire independent technical advisors to help them understand and comment on technical decisions

TBA - Targeted Brownfield Assessment; EPA program to help states, tribes, and municipalities—especially those without EPA Brownfields Assessment Pilots/Grants - promote the cleanup and redevelopment of brownfields

TCLP - Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure; to determine the potential for toxic chemicals to move through soils and groundwater

TMDL - Total Maximum Daily Loads; the amount of a particular pollutant that a particular waterbody can handle without violating state water quality standards

TOC - Total Organic Carbon; the amount of carbon bound in an organic compound and often used as an indicator of water quality

TRI - Toxic Release Inventory; a publicly available EPA database that contains information on toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities reported annually by certain covered industry groups and federal facilities

TSDF - Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facilities; for hazardous waste

TSE - RCRA Brownfield Prevention Initiative's Targeted Site Effort

UAO - Unilateral Administrative Order; legal document issued by EPA directing a PRP to perform site cleanup. Sets forth the liability of the party for the cleanup, describes actions to be taken, and subjects the recipient to penalties and damages for noncompliance

UST - Underground Storage Tank

VCP - Voluntary Cleanup Program; provides oversight to property owners to investigate and clean up hazardous substance sites in a voluntary, cooperative manner