REAL ESTATE : County Environmental Reports Needed for Buying Buildings Called Too Slow

It takes nearly twice as long in Orange County to process environmental studies of buildings through county government than it does in Riverside, San Bernardino or San Diego counties, an environmental consultant says.

Buyers and their lenders require these reports before a purchase because of the possibility that a building might have some kind of environmental contamination.

So it’s bad news that it takes four to six weeks to process the papers through the Orange County Department of Health Services. That’s compared to two or three weeks in the other counties, says Kenneth Thornburgh of the Southern California office of Certified Engineering & Testing Co., a Boston-based consulting firm.