Nebraska Voluntary Cleanup Program
Public Record


(updated April 2009)
April 2009 Adobe PDF version of the Public Record
File Size 141 KB


The Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act (SBLRBRA) was signed into law on January 11, 2002. The Act amends the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), as amended by adding Section 128(a). State response programs that receive Section 128(a) funding must establish and maintain a public record. In Nebraska, the State Response program is the Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP). As required by the SBLRBRA, the Public Record is a list of sites at which response actions have been completed during the previous year, or are planned to be addressed in the upcoming year. In addition, this Public Record identifies that have completed the VCP process prior to the reporting year. The Public Record is required to indicate whether a site, upon completion of the response action, will be suitable for unrestricted land use and, if not, shall identify the institutional controls relied on in the remedy. A separate institutional control tracking system has been developed to address this requirement and a report is included as an attachment to the Public Record. Although not required by the SBLRBRA, the institutional control tracking system also identifies Superfund National Priority List (NPL) and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) sites that are not suitable for unrestricted land use and have institutional controls.

Institutional Controls
The use of institutional controls is becoming more common as state cleanup programs increase the use of risk-based cleanups that consider the future land use of a contaminated site to allow some contamination to be left in place. Institutional controls are defined as non-engineered instruments, such as administrative and/or legal controls, that help to minimize the potential for human exposure to any contamination left in place and/or to protect the integrity of a remedy. Examples of common institutional controls include easements, covenants, ground water use restriction ordinances, zoning restrictions, and special building permit requirements. The State of Nebraska also has passed the Uniform Environmental Covenants Act (see Attachment 2-7) which allows the use of a restrictive covenant that is fully integrated into the traditional real property system to ensure long-term enforceability of the covenant. For more information on institutional controls, visit the Land Use Control Web Ring link below. The Land Use Control Web Ring links together Web pages and data from Federal, State, and Local governments as well as researchers, non-profits and others addressing institutional control/land use control issues.



Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality
1200 "N" Street, Suite 400
PO Box 98922
Lincoln, Nebraska 68509
(402) 471-2186