Purchasing real estate for homesteading purposes is becoming an increasingly popular option for many people. The purchase allows you the ability to become sustainable with various vegetables, fruits, and animals. Since growing your own food and possibly having a small sustainable fishing area are part of the homesteading concept, the condition of the land is vital. For this reason, an aspiring homestead owner may want to consider the benefits of an environmental assessment.
Current Contamination Levels
One of the key factors the environmental assessment of the property will tell you is information on the current levels of contamination. These levels are based on soil tests compiled from different areas of the property. The assessment usually looks for the major contaminants that would make the land dangerous to live on. For example, the soil tests will tell you if the levels of lead in the soil are too high to grow certain crops. It will also let you know if the contamination may affect the water for the area, which may affect the drinking water or if you need to use well water for the property.
History of Contamination of the Area
When you pull the first environmental assessment on the property, you may find that there are other assessments that have been done over the past decades or whenever the property changed hands or grew. These historical assessments will give you an idea if there was a spike in contamination levels at some point and if that is something you need to be concerned with now. You may also get to see what the recommendations were for those contamination levels and if those recommendations were followed.
Probability of Contamination of the Area
There are some cases where you may have a new manufacturing plant move into the area, or some other form of business that could possibly contaminate the area. In these cases an environmental assessment will how you the probability of you specific property becoming contaminated and how high the levels may be. This can be vital if you truly want a sustainable living and farming situation that could come to a halt with certain levels of environmental contamination.
By reviewing all of the environmental assessments for the homesteading property you can decide if the land will work for your needs or if there will be too much contamination now or in the future. If you aren't sure if there has been a current assessment on the property, consider asking the real estate agent as most will keep a record of that on file or direct you to the office that does have that information.
