News

In 2016, the Contaminated Property Redevelopment Act authorized the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) to issue Certificates of Environmental Liability Release (CELR) to certain prospective purchasers of contaminated properties. This policy was developed to encourage redevelopment of contaminated property for more productive use, by allowing buyers to avoid state cleanup liability. Blackstone has assisted multiple clients with successful CELR applications. Properties have included commercial sites, former gas stations, and former manufacturing facilities. For one client, a Phase I ESA identified the possible presence of a historical gas station on the property in the early 1960s, and a subsequent Phase II ESA confirmed the presence of hydrocarbon impacts in soil and groundwater above residential risk-based concentrations.  The liability release provided by the CELR obtained for this site allowed the property transaction to take place. For another client, Blackstone completed a Phase I ESA at a former manufacturing facility previously used for metal fabrication. The Phase I ESA identified one Historical Recognized Environmental Condition (REC)…

Many environmental and civil engineering projects require accurate spatial locating for data collection and surveying in the field, and Blackstone is pleased to announce two exciting new advancements to our UAV and Geospatial Service Line. The first advancement is related to increasing our GPS collection spatial accuracy and secondly to streamline data collection. (more…)