In late February, the city council of Auburn, in upstate New York, voted to approve an environmental assessment on a proposal to demolish a vacant city-owned building. The assessment found that the project (demolition of a former department store to make way for the construction of a theatre) would not result in any important impact on the environment. Two members of the public (an attorney and an engineer) objected to the assessment on the ground that it was deficient because it failed to consider vapor intrusion. According to a published news report about the council hearing, the objectors claimed that a different study had examined soil vapor intrusion of the property and found numerous contaminants.1 Whether the city council’s decision is successfully challenged on the grounds it did not consider vapor intrusion is not yet known, but this news report highlights the rise of vapor intrusion as a hot-button environmental issue.

Recently, both the New York State Department of Health and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issued guidance documents on vapor intrusion. The Health Department’s “Guidance for Evaluating Soil Vapor Intrusion in the State of New York” (DOH Guidance)2 and the NYSDEC’s “DER-13-Strategy For Evaluating Vapor Intrusion At Remedial Sites in New York” (DEC Guidance)3 are the agencies’ one-two punch of deciding how, where and when to conduct soil vapor intrusion studies. Significantly, by these policies and other actions, these agencies declared that soil vapor intrusion evaluations are among their top priorities.4

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