Often land has been contaminated at some point in its past. To look at a piece of property today, one may never realize that the site had an objectionable past. These contaminants may include spills of toxic chemicals, previous land fills, mines containing mine waste, leaking tanks, and traces of radioactivity. Other forms of contamination may include nearby bodies of water where there are questionable discharges or natural toxins flowing into the water. There may also be air quality questions such as the presence of noxious odors on a regular basis or being down wind of a site that does not meet EPA standards. The locations of major questionable sites are available through the EPA website (http: www.epa.gov/surf). The GIS is also capable of supplying this data. Sometimes a developer may have no choice but to build near one of these sites. To protect the development from this hazard, the GIS is capable of assigning a buffer zone around the identified sites. In this study, we chose a buffer area of 1000 feet around each site. Depending on the nature of the hazard, these buffer zones would be modified as needed.