My Opinion on HB1610

By William Fabian

I am for house bill 1610 as I think that we don’t need to be worrying about things like underground storage tanks or terrible water supplies as a potential buyer to a home. What the bill states is that If it is passed as is, the seller of a house will now need to disclose information to the buyer about seven things around one mile of the home, specifically “I. Auto salvage yards. II. Hazardous waste generators. III. Remediation sites. IV. Solid waste facilities. V. underground storage tanks. VI Environmental monitoring sites. VII. Local potential contamination sources.” So this will affect both the buyers and the sellers in the housing market, because now the sellers have to spend more and need to be more transparent with their information they give to the buyers, and in turn the buyers get more information about the house they were hoping to invest in and they get less stress for buying the house because they know that there either are or aren’t certain hazards around the home. Specifically, in the most updated portion of the bill, what was added was “The seller shall provide analytical testing results for samples collected from the well for water tests for MTBE and Perfluorinated chemicals if a source of such chemicals is identified within one mile of the property. The seller shall also provide notice if the property is located within ¼ mile of an underground storage tank and specify if a solid waste facility is within one mile of the property and whether the facility is lined or unlined.” I think a revision might be in order for this bill depending on research farther into the future, as were not sure how far the chemicals mentioned are able to spread when they go into the ground and or water table. For now, one mile seems like a good distance though. I don’t entirely understand why it is a one-mile radius for the sources of the chemicals but only a ¼ mile radius for the underground storage tanks, it seems like it should be the same radius because they are both sources of the chemicals and the storage tanks are already underground, so it may be easier for the chemicals to leak out. In the paper I helped write regarding this law we went over the current system and suffice to say this is a massive overhaul and improvement on the previous bill. In the previous bill you needed to disclose three things to the buyer which were 1. Water system type and if you had any problems with it. 2. Information on the sewage system of the house and who services the system. 3. The type of insulation the house has and its location. So over all I see this law as an improvement on the previous legislation we had in place and as just a good thing in general.