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MassDEP to finalize updated Activity and Use Limitation guidance after multi‑year review
Summary
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection said it will publish final Activity and Use Limitation guidance after years of drafting and public comment, adding clarifications on mixed‑use properties, sketch plan requirements and voluntary notices of residual contamination.
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s (MassDEP) Bureau of Waste Site Cleanup said it will finalize its long‑running update to Activity and Use Limitation (AUL) guidance, closing a public comment process that began with drafts dating to 2010 and continued through an interim draft circulated in 2024.
Bureau Assistant Commissioner Millie Garcia Serrano said the guidance incorporates hundreds of comments and aims to make AUL instruments clearer and more consistent with the Massachusetts Contingency Plan (MCP). She said the bureau intends to publish the final guidance and related material on the bureau web page and to follow up with Q&A documents and training for practitioners.
Peggy Shaw, chair of the AUL work group, summarized substantive clarifications in the final document: stronger direction for mixed‑use AULs to ensure each distinct current use meets a condition of no significant risk; edited examples in the guidance table that avoid implying AULs are required whenever subslab soil gas is detectable; and clearer language that AUL sketch plans need only show disposal site boundaries within the subject parcel, not on neighboring parcels. The guidance will also note MCP provisions allowing voluntary notice of residual contamination and emphasize that voluntary AULs are not an expected default.
Ken Mara of MassDEP’s policy division said the bureau will post the final guidance alongside a comment response summary and will consider additional AUL guidance items as audit issues arise. Millie Garcia Serrano and Peggy Shaw said the bureau plans a targeted AUL training and will publish updated Q&As after the guidance posts.
The bureau emphasized the AUL guidance is intended to be consistent with other detailed documents — notably MassDEP’s vapor intrusion guidance and the MCP — and not to replace those materials. The bureau invited stakeholders to flag topics for future Q&As or training sessions.
