In 1989, a new ASTM committee was established to define good commercial or customary practice for conducting “all appropriate inquiry” pursuant to the innocent landowner defense to CERCLA liability. Congress had given little guidance as to how to demonstrate there was “no reason to know” that contamination had occurred on a property prior to acquisition. No precedent existed within the environmental industry to guide the degree of due diligence required to meet this test and court decisions varied widely.

Two primary objectives of the ASTM committee were to establish a standard of inquiry that was practical and reasonable, and to improve the quality and consistency of environmental site assessments. The committee included hundreds of people representing the financial, real estate, insurance and legal industries, environmental professionals, and regulatory agencies. This balanced representation is an important requirement of the ASTM consensus process, ensuring that no single interest dominates the development of industry standards. After four years of tough negotiations, the first version of the E1527 was published in 1993 and it quickly became the industry standard for conducting Phase I Environmental Site Assessments. ...

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