(a) If there are unrecovered costs incurred by an agency at a site for which an owner of the site is not liable as an innocent landowner, bona fide purchaser, or contiguous property owner, an agency shall have a lien on the site, or may, by agreement with the owner, obtain from the owner a lien on other property or other assurance of payment for the unrecovered response costs, subject to all of the following requirements:

(1) A response action for which there are unrecovered costs of the agency is carried out at the site.

(2) The response action increased the fair market value of the site above the fair market value of the site that existed before the response action was initiated.

(b) The lien may include costs that are first incurred by the agency with respect to a response action at the site.

(c) The lien amount shall not exceed the increase in fair market value of the property attributable to the response action at the time of a sale or other disposition of the property, and shall not exceed the unrecovered response costs actually incurred by the agency.

(d) The lien shall continue until the earlier of satisfaction of the lien by sale or other means, or recovery of all response costs incurred by the agency at the site. Once the amount of the lien is satisfied in full, the agency shall record satisfaction on lien on the real property.

(e) The notice of the lien shall be recorded in the official records of the county recorder’s office for the county in which the real property is located.

(f) A lien imposed under this section shall have the force and effect of, and the priority of, a judgment lien upon its recordation in the county in which the property subject to the lien is located.

(Added by Stats. 2004, Ch. 705, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2005. Repealed as of January 1, 2027, pursuant to Section 25395.109, with continuing effect as provided in Section 25395.110.)