It is the purpose of this part and it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission:

1. (1) To encourage and facilitate the redevelopment of abandoned industrial, commercial, or agricultural sites, or abandoned residential property as a sound land use management policy to prevent the needless development of prime farmland, open spaces, and natural and recreation areas and to prevent urban sprawl;
2. (2) To encourage and facilitate the redevelopment of abandoned sites so that these sites can be safely returned to useful, tax-producing properties to protect existing jobs and provide new job opportunities;
3. (3) To provide persons interested in redeveloping abandoned sites with a method of determining what their legal liabilities and cleanup responsibilities will be as they plan the reuse of abandoned sites;
4. (4) To establish incentives to encourage prospective purchasers to voluntarily develop and implement cleanup plans of abandoned sites without the need for adversarial enforcement actions by the Division of Environmental Quality;
5. (5) To determine, through permitting policies, administrative orders, or memoranda of agreement, as appropriate, when contamination will and will not pose unacceptable risks to public health or the environment and that equivalent concepts are used in establishing cleanup policies for abandoned sites;
6. (6) To ensure that parties and persons responsible under law for pollution at abandoned sites perform remedial responses which are fully consistent with existing requirements;

7. (7) As an incentive to promote the redevelopment of abandoned industrial sites, persons not responsible for preexisting pollution at or contamination on industrial sites should:

   1. (A) Meet alternative cleanup requirements if they acquire title after the nature of conditions at the site have been disclosed; and
   2. (B) Declare and commit to investigate, remediate as necessary, and limit the property to a specified future land use of the subject site; and

8. (8)

   1. (A) Property transactions at times necessitate title acquisition prior to completion of the actions contemplated at Arkansas Code § 8-7-1104(b) – (d) by persons not previously involved with the site or otherwise considered responsible parties for environmental conditions at a site.
   2. (B) These persons should not be foreclosed from participation under the procedure enacted under the Voluntary Cleanup Act, Arkansas Code § 8-7-1101 et seq.
   3. (C) Therefore, these persons, at the discretion of the Director of the Division of Environmental Quality, may submit a letter of intent that will set forth the persons’ desire to purchase the site and retain their eligibility for participation in the voluntary cleanup program established by this part.