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Illinois environmental records for a Phase I ESA

16Program pages

Illinois programs

Illinois Environmental Protection Agency 16

A Phase I records review in Illinois runs mostly through one state agency, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (Illinois EPA). Its Bureau of Land oversees the cleanup of contaminated property and regulates how waste is moved, stored and disposed of, so most of the tank cleanup, voluntary cleanup, brownfields, state-funded cleanup, landfill and hazardous waste records on this page are that bureau's. Illinois EPA's pages also send a searcher to other offices: the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal for underground tank permits, and the Illinois Emergency Management Agency for release reports. This page maps each kind of record ASTM E1527-21 asks for to the Illinois program behind it, and links a page on each program.

The standard record types, in Illinois

ASTM record type Illinois program Agency
State Superfund equivalent State Response Action Program: cleanups of hazardous substance sites that are the responsibility of Illinois EPA's State Sites Unit, with a database of their status. The pages read do not call it a state Superfund program; the pairing is the handbook's reading. Illinois EPA
State hazardous waste facilities No single Illinois list is paired here. The Hazardous Waste page covers the Bureau of Land's RCRA Database and Illinois EPA's STRIP list of permitted storage, treatment, recycling, incineration and processing facilities. Illinois EPA
Landfills and solid waste sites Landfills: Illinois EPA's map of landfills in three stages (active, in post-closure care, and certified as having completed post-closure care). Illinois EPA
Leaking storage tanks Leaking Underground Storage Tank (LUST) Program: the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Incident Tracking (LIT) database. Illinois EPA
Registered storage tanks No Illinois EPA list is paired here. Illinois EPA's leaking tank page speaks of tanks registered with OSFM, the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal, and its introduction to leaking tanks says OSFM issues the permits to install, repair, upgrade, close and remove them. This handbook does not read OSFM's pages. How the two agencies split the work is on the LUST Program page. Office of the State Fire Marshal
Institutional and engineering controls Uniform Environmental Covenants Act (UECA) registry. Illinois EPA says the Act reaches cleanups under RCRA, CERCLA, or an order of a court or the Pollution Control Board, and not Site Remediation Program or LUST projects that receive a No Further Remediation letter or use an Environmental Land Use Control. The controls on a site closed with that letter are written into the No Further Remediation (NFR) letter, which is recorded with the county. Illinois EPA
Voluntary cleanup sites Site Remediation Program (SRP), with the Pre-Notice Site Cleanup Program (1989 to 1995) before it. Illinois EPA
Brownfields sites Brownfields: the Brownfield Sites Map, from which, Illinois EPA's page says, a list of brownfields sites can be exported. This handbook did not open the map. Illinois EPA

How far each search reaches is on the ASTM search distances page.

Other Illinois records worth reading

These are not paired with a record type in the table above, but each answers a question an Illinois Phase I runs into.

One agency, and the offices beside it

Most programs on this page sit in Illinois EPA's Bureau of Land, but other offices hold part of the story. Illinois EPA's introduction to leaking tanks says OSFM regulates how tank systems are run day to day and decides whether an owner is eligible for the state UST Fund and at what deductible, while Illinois EPA reviews the cleanup. Tank releases are reported to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA), and Illinois EPA's emergency response page gives the line of IEMA's Office of Homeland Security, with the National Response Center, for reporting a hazardous material release. Illinois EPA's injection well page says the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Office of Mines and Minerals, runs the Class II program for oil and gas wells. For Superfund sites and federal removal actions, Illinois EPA works with U.S. EPA Region 5. Illinois EPA says it has handed its inspection of solid waste facilities in some areas to local bodies, the City of Chicago among them. Several of the rules these programs follow were adopted or amended by the Illinois Pollution Control Board. This handbook does not read those agencies' pages.

One search that crosses Illinois EPA's programs

Illinois EPA's IEPA Document Explorer searches agency documents for more than 26,000 sites and facilities, by site name, address or Bureau ID, or on a map. Its FOIA page says the documents include air permits, water discharge (NPDES) permits, and the technical documents of the LUST, Site Remediation and State Response Action programs, and counts 475,000 documents and over 13.5 million pages. The home page's link labeled Search Illinois EPA Records goes to the same address.

The Bureau of Land Databases page gathers the bureau's searches: the leaking tank, Site Remediation Program and State Response Action Program databases, Solid Waste Permit Activities, Beneficial Use Applications, a RCRA Database and used tire inspections. The page says results from its Bureau of Land Inventory Database link to the bureau's other online databases, to U.S. EPA's FRS database and to images of recorded NFR letters. An agency-wide facility inventory gives facility details such as the Bureau ID; the Bureau of Land Databases page calls it the Agency Facility Inventory and Information System (AFIIS), and the FOIA page calls it the Agency Facility Inventory and Information Search System (AFISS). Of these searches, this handbook opened only the leaking tank one.

Illinois EPA's GIS data page warns that its databases can hold errors despite its efforts and may change without public notice, and for more about a site it points to the linked information or to viewing the public file through a FOIA request. Treat a database entry as the pointer to a file, and read the file.

Getting a file from Illinois EPA

A listing says a record exists. The reports and letters are in the file. Illinois EPA takes requests under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act through its online FOIA Request Web Form, which needs an account and which the FOIA page says gets the quickest response, or by fax, U.S. mail or special carrier, which need none and which take anonymous requests. Mailed or faxed requests go to Illinois EPA FOIA #16, Division of Records Mgmt., 2520 W Iles Ave, P.O. Box 19276, Springfield, IL 62794-9276 (voice 217-558-5101, fax 217-782-9290).

The page says Illinois EPA keeps its records mostly by location, site or facility name, or project, so give the facility name, the address and every ID number you have. It answers a noncommercial request within five working days, with a five-day extension allowed on written notice, and a commercial purpose request within 21 working days. Copying, fees and how the statute defines a commercial purpose are on the FOIA requests page.

The footer of Illinois EPA's pages gives 2520 W Iles Avenue, P.O. Box 19276, Springfield, IL 62794-9276, and (217) 782-3397; its Contact page lists (217) 557-8761 under the same address, and offices at addresses in Champaign, Chicago, Collinsville, Des Plaines, Elgin, Marion, Peoria and Rockford. The Bureau of Land's switchboard is (217) 524-3300, option 4. General questions go to EPA.ContactUs@illinois.gov.

Sources

Illinois Environmental Protection Agency pages, read October 13, 2026:

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