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Environmental Easement and Certificate of Completion Process

Environmental Easements are required for remedial projects which rely upon one or more institutional and/or engineering controls. The Environmental Easement runs with the land in favor of the State, subject to the provisions of ECL Article 71, Title 36, and contains the use restriction(s) and/or any prohibition(s) on the use of land in a manner inconsistent with engineering controls. The emplacement of an Environmental Easement provides an effective and enforceable means of encouraging the reuse and redevelopment of a controlled property, at a level that has been determined to be safe for a specific use, while ensuring the performance of operation, maintenance, and/or monitoring requirements. For reference, a sample Environmental Easement can be downloaded from the link at the right.

Certificates of Completion are issued upon approval of a final engineering report or the issuance of the no further action decision document, and provide liability protections for site owners, developers and lessees. For eligible parties in the Brownfield Cleanup Program (BCP), the Certificate of Completion will trigger the availability of tax credits.

Report Templates

In order to finalize cleanup projects, remedial parties must submit two key documents to DEC for review - the Site Management Plan (SMP) and the Final Engineering Report (FER). To facilitate the review of these documents, DEC has prepared templates which include instructions for use by remedial parties. These templates can be downloaded from DEC's FTP site:

Final Engineering Report Template (Microsoft Word format) Sample Final Engineering Report (30 page PDF, 300 KB)

Site Management Plan Template (Microsoft Word format) Sample Site Management Plan (67 page PDF, 500 KB)


More about Environmental Easement and Certificate of Completion Process:

  • Remediation Sites with Environmental Easements - Information about Remediation Sities with Environmental Easements.
  • Procedures for Processing Building Permit Evaluation Requests - The process for submitting a request for a building permit review to the DEC.
  • Survey Requirements - This page provides a list that describes what needs to be included on the survey that supports an environmental easement.
  • Title Requirements - The page details the requirements for the title report or an abstract of title as related to an Environmental Easement. Every title report or title abstract shall provide a Certification Page, Schedule A, and Schedule B.
  • Transfer of Certificate of Completion (COC) - Pursuant to the Environmental Conservation Law Section 27-1419(5) and 6 NYCRR 375-1.9(f), a certificate of completion may be transferred to successors and assigns of the remedial party or parties named in the certificate.
  • BCP Certificate of Completion Information Session Presentations - In an effort to facilitate the timely issuance of Certificates of Completion for sites in the Brownfield Cleanup Program, the Division of Environmental Remediation and the Office of General Counsel held an informational session for BCP Applicants and their representatives on May 8, 2009 in Albany, New York.