No Further Remediation (NFR) Letters

A No Further Remediation (NFR) Letter is how the Bureau of Land of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (Illinois EPA) closes a site in its cleanup programs. It is issued once the owner or operator has met the program's requirements and the remediation objectives that apply under the Tiered Approach to Corrective Action Objectives (TACO), and Illinois EPA says it can be had only by taking part in one of the bureau's programs. Because the owner chooses the objectives and can tailor them to the planned use of the land, Illinois EPA says no single standard letter would fit every case.

In a Phase I ESA

An NFR letter is a closure document, and often the place where the controls on a property are written. ASTM E1527-21 lists state registries of institutional and engineering controls among its standard sources; their general reading is on the State/Tribal Institutional and Engineering Control Registries page. In Illinois the controls set by a LUST or Site Remediation Program closure are in the letter, which is recorded in the county land records, while covenants from RCRA, CERCLA and ordered cleanups go on the Uniform Environmental Covenants Act (UECA) registry. Read the letter itself, not only the fact that one was issued.

• What the letter means depends on the program. Illinois EPA's fact sheet on NFR letters says each program's letter rests on its own law. Under the LUST Program, it means no more corrective action is needed for the release. Under the Site Remediation Program (SRP), a comprehensive letter means the site is protective of health and the environment, and a focused letter covers only part of a parcel, only the contaminants the owner chose to address, or both. Section 4(y) of the Illinois Environmental Protection Act allows a letter releasing a person from responsibility for taking preventive or corrective action at a site, and RCRA closures and corrective action have their own forms of closure.
• The letter can carry controls. It can serve as an institutional control, limiting how the land is used so that people are not exposed to contamination left in place. Illinois EPA gives as examples a bar on using the groundwater for drinking and a bar on residential use. Breaking a condition is grounds for voiding the letter.
• It is recorded with the county. Illinois EPA says the letter does not take effect until it is recorded with the county recorder, where it is indexed to the property so later users learn of its conditions. The agency supplies a one-page environmental cover letter, and the owner records it with the letter. For a LUST site, the introduction to leaking tanks says this must be done within 45 days.
• A letter can be voided or replaced. Illinois EPA may seek to void a letter for a broken land use restriction, failure to run or maintain controls, improper disturbance or removal of contamination, failure to record it, fraud or misrepresentation, contaminants found later that the investigation missed, or, in the SRP only, an unpaid NFR assessment fee or program fees. An owner can also enter the SRP later and earn a new letter that supersedes the first, for instance to lift an industrial or commercial restriction; the fact sheet says a site subject to state or federal tank laws may not transfer into the SRP since April 5, 2022.
• Only the SRP charges for one. The fact sheet says SRP sites pay a fee and LUST and RCRA sites do not.

Where to look a site up

• The recorded letter is in the land records of the county where the site lies. Look for it in the title search.
• The Bureau of Land Databases page says the results of its Bureau of Land Inventory Database are cross-referenced with images of recorded NFR letters. This handbook did not open it.
• The leaking tank database's record layout has fields for an incident's NFR date and its recorded, voided and rescission dates; see the LUST Program page.

Getting the file

Illinois EPA takes requests under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act through its online FOIA Request Web Form, which needs an account, or by fax, U.S. mail or special carrier. Ask for the letter with the reports it was based on. Fees, reply times and the options for large files are on the FOIA requests page.

Sources

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

• Fact Sheet 3: No Further Remediation Letters - Fact Sheets, last modified February 1, 2023.
• Fact Sheet 4: Institutional Controls, last modified January 6, 2023.
• Uniform Environmental Covenants Act, last modified July 31, 2025.
• An Introduction to Leaking Underground Storage Tanks, last updated April 2022 in its text and last modified December 31, 2025.
• Bureau of Land Databases, last modified December 13, 2023.
• Leaking UST, last modified April 29, 2026.
• Freedom of Information Act, last modified May 2, 2024.