West Virginia Code 22-22B-3 – Nature of rights; subordination of interests
(a) Any person, including a person that owns an interest in the real property, the agency, or a municipality or other unit of local government, may be a holder. An environmental covenant may identify more than one holder. The interest of a holder is an interest in real property.
Terms Used In West Virginia Code 22-22B-3
- Agency: means the Department of Environmental Protection or any federal agency that determines or approves the environmental response project pursuant to which the environmental covenant is created. See West Virginia Code 22-22B-2
- Common interest community: means a condominium, cooperative, or other real property with respect to which a person, by virtue of the person'. See West Virginia Code 22-22B-2
- Environmental covenant: means a servitude arising under an environmental response project that imposes activity and use limitations. See West Virginia Code 22-22B-2
- Holder: means the grantee of an environmental covenant as specified in subsection (a), section three of this article. See West Virginia Code 22-22B-2
- Obligation: An order placed, contract awarded, service received, or similar transaction during a given period that will require payments during the same or a future period.
- Person: means an individual, corporation, business trust, estate, trust, partnership, limited liability company, association, joint venture, public corporation, government, governmental subdivision, agency or instrumentality or any other legal or commercial entity. See West Virginia Code 22-22B-2
- Real property: Land, and all immovable fixtures erected on, growing on, or affixed to the land.
- real property: include lands, tenements and hereditaments, all rights thereto and interests therein, except chattel interests. See West Virginia Code 2-2-10
- Record: means information that is inscribed on a tangible medium or that is stored in an electronic or other medium and is retrievable in perceivable form. See West Virginia Code 22-22B-2
(b) A right of an agency under this article or under an environmental covenant, other than a right as a holder, is not an interest in real property.
(c) An agency is bound by any obligation it assumes in an environmental covenant, but an agency does not assume obligations merely by signing an environmental covenant. Any other person that signs an environmental covenant is bound by the obligations the person assumes in the covenant, but signing the covenant does not change obligations, rights or protections granted or imposed under law other than this article except as provided in the covenant.
(d) The following rules apply to interests in real property in existence at the time an environmental covenant is created or amended:
(1) An interest that has priority under other law is not affected by an environmental covenant unless the person that owns the interest subordinates that interest to the covenant.
(2) This article does not require a person that owns a prior interest to subordinate that interest to an environmental covenant or to agree to be bound by the covenant.
(3) A subordination agreement may be contained in an environmental covenant covering real property or in a separate record. If the environmental covenant covers commonly owned property in a common interest community, the record may be signed by any person authorized by the governing board of the owners' association.
(4) An agreement by a person to subordinate a prior interest to an environmental covenant affects the priority of that person's interest but does not by itself impose any affirmative obligation on the person with respect to the environmental covenant.