Risk assessment is one of the best tools for the proactive, responsible, and reasonable management of environmental liabilities. Using technically strong, legally defensible, and site-specific data, risk assessment can be used to identify, quantify, prioritize, and manage the risks associated with an existing or potential chemical impact to the environment.  Whether used to assess the potential liabilities associated with the purchase of property, limit site investigation activities to areas of “real” concern, develop health-based cleanup levels, negotiate fair-share cleanup allocations among multiple responsible parties, or identify and select appropriate management options, risk assessment has become a common and necessary tool for evaluation of environmental liabilities associated with a property.

 

Waterstone's risk assessment and toxicological services have multiple applications and purposes. The most value-added applications include the following:

 

• Guiding the assessment process to reduce the scope of necessary investigations;

• Applying risk assessment principles to a reasonable amount of site-specific data to accurately describe risks to humans and wildlife;

• Allocating potential risks from multi-chemical scenarios to all responsible parties using chemical finger printing techniques;

• Evaluating the magnitude of remediation, natural resource damage, compliance, and litigation liabilities to understand the extent of each problem;

• Identifying management options for liabilities;

• Using cost-benefit analysis to select appropriate management options;

• Differentiating worthwhile components of proposed regulations from those aspects which provide little public health or environmental improvement;

• Evaluating real versus perceived health effects from exposure to chemicals for toxic tort litigation support; and

• Negotiating integrated settlements including restoration, where feasible, to take care of multiple problems with a single, well designed solution.

 

Today, Waterstone remains on the forefront of the development of health-based, risk-driven remedial investigations and is particularly adept at assisting risk managers in identifying the important chemicals of concern, and developing health-based cleanup levels and cost-effective remedial alternatives. Through the use of sophisticated risk assessment techniques that provide scientifically defensible data, Waterstone negotiates with regulatory agencies to obtain "No Further Action" and "Limited Action" decisions for client. As a result, Waterstone's work has saved its clients millions of dollars by optimizing sampling, analysis, health and safety, and cleanup efforts.