Our Portland Service Center is located in the Guild's Lake Industrial Sanctuary in northwest Portland along US Highway 30/St. Helens Road. Rather than see a fellow small business shut down, we acquired a small company who specialized in medical waste management in 2014 as part of our growth plans. This acquisition added new waste management services to ECC and helped facilitate our expansion into the Pacific Northwest. Shortly after completing the acquisition we determined we needed to move from our location at the Port of Portland.
During initial exploration for a new location, we encountered the State of Oregon's prospective purchaser agreement (PPA) program that encourages redevelopment of impaired properties in exchange for limiting liability to the new purchaser. As a waste management and environmental consulting firm, we were intrigued by the opportunity to seek out impaired and undervalued property, self-perform and manage environmental cleanup activities, and return a property to beneficial reuse for our new community. Shortly after discussing this program with the State of Oregon, we identified a former gas station that had been out-of-service for some time. We engaged the owners, brokered a deal for purchase, designed a PPA with the State of Oregon, and completed all the paperwork. This lengthy process took longer than anticipated, but eventually we became the owners of a contaminated site!
Since completing the deal, we have removed the underground storage tanks and fuel pump islands, removed and disposed of contaminated soil, and conducted quarterly groundwater monitoring across the site to ensure contaminant levels remain below industrial site cleanup levels. We have completed a Construction Management Plan that will guide future construction activities at the site to ensure contaminated media is managed appropriately, and we are beginning the process of upgrading the building on the site to become our local warehouse and office space.