This process, however, is time-consuming and expensive. When there is no one to pay for a cleanup, and no one is interested in purchasing and redeveloping a property because of legal or financial concerns, these eyesores can blight a community's landscape and threaten its economy long into the future. There are no regulations that would prohibit siting a disposal facility on contaminated land. It might be a factory or industrial plant, long abandoned, which has fallen into disrepair. This property has probably been up for sale for years, with no takers.
Prospective buyers are leery of inheriting the liability for potential soil contamination.
Much of the land in this property might require the cleanup of surface soils because of some form of contamination, such as heavy metals or petroleum products. Of course, there are technical, legal, financial and institutional issues which would need to be addressed by both the Siting Board and the community in evaluating contaminated property as a potential site for New Jersey's low-level radioactive waste disposal facility.