131

9
Restoring Our Brownfields: Industrial Sites, Ports, and Military Bases

What was once a lovely green expanse of rolling hills in Woburn, Massachusetts has been used, since 1853, as an industrial site for the production of pesticides, leather, chemicals, and munitions. So it comes as no surprise that the site, known in recent times as Industri-plex, became a hellhole of contamination, and that it had the honor of becoming one of the first Superfund projects in 1983. It also had its moment of fame as the subject of the excellent book A Civil Action, and the dumbed-down, whitewashed movie based on the book.

In terms of danger to the public, Industri-plex ranked fifth out of some 1,400 worthy competitors nationwide. The surrounding residential area had virulently venomous groundwater and became one of the world’s worst childhood leukemia clusters. Six-term Woburn mayor John Rabbitt once described Industri-plex as “the albatross of the Woburn 132(River).” The site has been now been renamed in honor of Jimmy Anderson, one of the many local children who died of leukemia. The families who suffered horribly—leukemia was just one of the many toxin-related diseases that afflicted them—said the pollutants in the water were bad enough to detect with the nose.

“I’ve replaced the faucets in the house three times in 15 years; the seats were eaten away,” Jimmy’s father complained in the May 1, 1980, Woburn edition of The Daily Times. “The dishwasher door was just eaten away.” The companies that caused the pollution—those sued included Grace, Beatrice Foods, and Unifirst—were certainly to blame, but so was the city, which sank drinking water wells in an area of known pollution, against the advice of the consultant they hired in 1958.

The largest annual national brownfields conference is organized by the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania and is sponsored by over 100 companies. Since 1997, exemplary and recently completed brown-fields projects—usually one from each of the ten USEPA regions—receive the Phoenix Award. The awards are a national program—created by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection—to recognize “innovative yet practical remediation projects.” Industri-plex was a winner in 2000.

During the Phoenix Award ceremony, Woburn city leaders were quoted as saying that Industri-plex now “represents this community’s economic future,” and it has “become a vital source of pride, renewal, and hope.” I attended the Brownfields 2000 conference and must admit 133that, despite their being straightforward and devoid of pomp, the Phoenix Awards ceremony made quite an impression on me. After all, how often does one get to witness for-profit companies being recognized for turning some of the worst places on Earth into sources of “pride, renewal, and hope”?

THE SCOPE OF THE BROWNFIELDS RESTORATION INDUSTRY

Despite that opening story, this chapter isn’t about large, federally funded cleanup efforts, known in the United States as Superfund sites. It’s mostly about smaller, locally funded and managed public-private redevelopment programs. These “brownfields projects” are transforming tens of thousands of less-polluted abandoned tracts back into valuable properties for industry, commerce, recreation, housing, and even farming.

Specifically, this chapter deals with the restoration of old industrial sites, the redevelopment of closed military bases (which usually have areas of significant contamination), the reuse of defunct landfills, and the remediation of other forms of polluted properties. Brownfields can take a broad variety of types, sizes, and locations. Until we recently standardized (somewhat) on “brownfields redevelopment,” their restoration went by many names, such as “voluntary cleanup programs,” “industrial infill,” “land recycling programs,” and “urban reindustrialization.”

The U.S. brownfields inventory, currently estimated by the USEPA at between 500,000 and a million sites, has been growing quickly and steadily, partly because we’re actually looking for them now, and partly due to the decline of our manufacturing sector, which has put more properties on the market. But our inventory growth was nowhere near as spectacular as that of Germany’s after reunification: the former East Germany is basically one huge brownfield.

Not even the Antarctic lacks contaminated sites (off-whitefields?), depressingly enough, and that can be blamed on scientists, not industry. The Australian government has taken on the job of removing 330,693 tons of waste, much of it highly toxic (e.g., mercury from thermometers, lead and cadmium from batteries, etc.) from Antarctica, using a French company as the contractor. France and South Africa have already begun cleanups of their own research bases.

134

Tribal lands aren’t exempt, either: Besides having long been used as industrial dumping grounds by new development-based agencies that took advantage of native Americans’ economic desperation, the lands also have “normal” brownfields. The Puyallup Tribe of the Tacoma, Washington area, for example, received a $100,000 grant from USEPA to launch a Regional Brownfields Assessment Pilot program.

Lest you’re envisioning bison and wolves, let me specify that this project is for the redevelopment of an industrial port and waterfront area in urban Tacoma. Besides the usual contamination cleanup, the project includes wetlands mitigation, integrated with their adjacent properties. It also involves students at their Tribal College, which should prepare the students nicely for careers in restorative development.

The Genesis of Brownfields Redevelopment

Brownfields redevelopment, as an industry, is barely more than a decade old, and its roots reach only a decade before that. It’s only now beginning to mature out of its formative period. The USEPA’s Brownfields initiative emerged in 1993 to clean up abandoned, lightly contaminated sites and restore them to productive community use.

Brownfields initiatives should not be confused with the Superfund program, which was designed to clean up the largest and most highly contaminated sites, such as the infamous Love Canal in New York. Since its creation, the Brownfields initiative has awarded over 500 grants to communities nationwide, totaling over $140 million. These grants resulted in the creation of nearly 7,000 new jobs and leveraged over $2.3 billion in private investment. For every dollar invested by federal, state, and local governments, almost $2.50 of private investment was harnessed. All this was accomplished without the need for a single new law or regulation.

The industries of new development have long followed a three-step formula for success: (1) gain cheap or free access to publicly owned natural resources, (2) turn them into profits and pollution, and (3) close down (or sell) the company when the resources run out or when the environmental 135cleanup bill comes due. In this way, new-development firms’ material, waste disposal and liability costs are heavily subsidized by taxpayers, but the profits accrue solely to the companies. (Interestingly, the Soviet Union used the same model during its frenzy of new development. The Soviet Union is dead [as are many of its ecosystems], but the model, although definitely on the decline, is still well-entrenched in the United States.) This model adds the insult of unemployment to the injury of contamination, entire communities can go down the drain.

The business of redeveloping industrial sites actually got started in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but was virtually halted as an unintended result of the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), more popularly known as the Superfund Law.

CERCLA was an attempt to gain a little justice, in its effort to go after those companies and recover some of the cost of remediating their former sites. In a further attempt to make sure these polluters didn’t make additional profits by selling the spoiled property for more than it was worth, CERCLA made buyers responsible for cleanup, even if they had had nothing to do with contaminating the land.

Although there was certainly a basis in justice for pursuing corporate deep pockets to help taxpayers with the cleanup costs, the simplistic, blunt approach of pursuing buyers was the wrong approach. CERCLA should have gone the more tangled root of recovering funds from the original polluters, by attaching the divisions and assets they sold to other firms (doing business with despoilers should be dangerous), by raiding the often-huge estates of their former executives, and by other means. But CERCLA didn’t, and the net result of punishing often innocent buyers was to kill the market for contaminated properties: the legal liabilities and costs of cleanup were not measurable enough for buyers to make sound business decisions.

What’s more, the definition of “present owner” included whomever held the title—often a bank or other financial services company—so even when a sufficiently adventurous developer came along, financing was usually unavailable. At this point, we had the “brown vs. green” standoff typical of new development-based economies, and cleanup was limited to sites with heavy enough contamination to qualify for Superfund. 136Tens of thousands of nicely situated chunks of real estate went to waste, “forcing” growing cities and companies to sprawl, and allowing millions of tons of poison to continue seeping into our rivers, wells, and oceans.

Some innovative thinkers at the USEPA saw a solution.

To launch the brownfields program nationwide with minimal funds, the USEPA cleverly established over 228 grants of up to $200,000 each— a total of over $42 million—for “Brownfields Assessment Pilots.” The outcomes and/or progress of these pilots can be found on the USEPA’s website (www.epa.gov). This pilot program had four goals:

1. To increase participation of all interested parties in designing the process of cleaning and productively reusing contaminated sites
2. To stimulate a national investigation of “best practices” among the states and communities
3. To aggregate federal, state, and community entities into a single body dedicated to learning from each other’s innovations
4. To help ensure that the brownfields remediation process maximized its contribution to environmental justice, since lower-income (often minority) communities were disproportionately affected by brownfields.

Recent Industry Developments

At the beginning of the 1990s, virtually no one had ever heard the term brownfields. Now it’s in Webster’s. The past decade has seen a phenomenal increase in brownfields investment and associated cleanup, mostly due to modifications to CERCLA that stopped it from scaring away buyers. Add other factors, such as a plethora of municipal and state laws and incentives, 137plus the rise of related insurance products, and we find that risks have now been rendered at least manageable, sometimes even negligible.

In Europe, the Network for Industrially Contaminated Land in Europe (NICOLE), has emerged as the primary forum for brownfields issues (including those larger, highly toxic sites that would qualify for Superfund status if they were in the United States). NICOLE’s purpose is to bring together researchers, contaminated site owners, and remediation contractors throughout Europe. They help identify research needs, gather and disseminate best practices, collaborate with other international brownfields networks, and generally build a functional community from the various stakeholders, which also includes land developers, local and regional authorities, and the insurance and financial industries.

The NICOLE website (www.nicole.org) states: “The problem of land and groundwater contaminated by industrial activity is a significant one that affects all industrialised societies. Whilst businesses and authorities are striving to identify and manage such problems responsibly and cost-effectively they are often doing so without a clear understanding of the complexities or the scientific and technological aspects of the problem.”

In the April/May 2002 issue of New Urban News, an article entitled “New Urbanism Makes Inroads in Germany” said, “In the 1980s and 1990s the discussion about [German] cities has focused more on reusing abandoned industrial areas and dealing with the threat from suburban shopping centers. It quoted Harald Kegler, head of the Laboratory for Regional Planning in Wittenberg, as saying, “So, in Germany, much more than in the US, you can find a big collection of practical experiences with renewing historical cities and brownfields.”

In the early days, cleanup projects in the United States suffered from a “study it to death” sickness, which meant that most funds went into consulting, site assessment, and cleanup methodology research. Now that the industry is maturing, the construction and redevelopment side of the business is growing quickly.

Another positive recent development is the exit of most defense and nuclear power contractors from the business. Many of these exits are the result of lawsuits and protests from states over inefficient projects that were often dangerous to the public. For example, when nuclear power company BNFL tried to burn radioactive waste from a contaminated site in an incinerator, thus dumping it into the air, citizens’ activist groups, not public health agencies, quashed the attempt. 138

When Superfund monies were flowing fast and furious, defense and nuclear power firms used their immense power on Capital Hill to capture a major chunk of the business, even though (with a few exceptions, such as consulting firm SAIC) their expertise was in manufacturing, not in civil engineering or the sciences.

The present shift to civil engineering firms has greatly cut down on the Pentagon-style cost overruns and sloppy work that typified early Superfund projects. Federal remediation work is improving in other ways, too: performance contracting, thanks to sophisticated new metrics and monitoring, is becoming the norm, causing firms to pay strict attention to the quality of their work in order to ensure full compensation (not to mention contract retention and renewals).

Many would argue that the 1990s pendulum initially swung a bit too far in the direction of accommodating the developers. This was probably an understandable overreaction to CERCLA’s early ‘80s draconian approach, which nearly killed the cleanup industry (in part by making it totally dependent on government, rather than business, initiative). For this restoration industry to remain healthy—both for practitioners and the public—industry and government will need to allow the pendulum to oscillate a bit closer to the mid-point. Such moderation would better balance the need to contain costs and liabilities for lenders and developers with the health of people and wildlife.

Unlike most environmental programs, brownfields redevelopment (like all restorative development) has strong bipartisan support. Thus, no slowdown was projected to occur after George W. Bush was elected. Passage of the historic Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act on April 25, 2001 further solidified this new industry.

This Brownfields Act was the first bill to achieve a unanimous 99 to 0 “yes” vote in the Senate during the new Bush administration. It authorized an additional $1 billion per year to be spent on brownfields between 2001 and 2006, mostly in the form of state programs that leverage many times that amount in private funds. The House version (HR 2941) also passed unanimously, in June of 2002. As a result, growth in the U.S. brownfields remediation industry is expected for some time to come.

Superfund reauthorization has been stymied in Congress for a decade, due primarily to pressure from the mining and manufacturing lobbies. Legislators also worry that the program spent over $30 billion between 1981 and 1996, yet only 97 out of the 1300 priority sites were removed from the list (successfully remediated). Although it’s true that 139 the program could have been far better designed and administered, Congress needs to wake up to the real size (and true long-term costs) of the problem and realize that $30 billion was a token amount.

After a fast start in the early ‘90s, the U.S. remediation industry had three down years from 1996 to 1998, caused primarily by a lack of new cleanup regulations and by a slowdown in government cleanup programs. But 1999 and 2000 saw renewed activity. Total U.S. remediation revenues in 2000 were $6.28 billion. The fact that Superfund accounted for only 11 percent of that figure proves this industry has been successfully weaned from public funds, with a corresponding growth in business opportunities.

For such a young industry, brownfields has shown amazing stability, despite the federal government’s having been such a large player. Small and minority-owned firms reportedly grew their share of the market from five to ten percent in the mid-’90s to 15-20 percent in 2000, according to the Environmental Business Journal, Vol. 13, No. 5/6, 2001.

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Discussion of remediation strategies and technologies, which focus on how toxins are removed, fills many volumes, and is far beyond this book’s scope. What we can review here are some decision-making issues related to the choice of remediation methods. There are usually three basic considerations: time, cost, and effectiveness. Obviously, there are no either/or decisions here: the solution that balances all three factors best, given the unique priorities of each project, is usually the one chosen. 140

Some communities and companies add a fourth (optional!) criterion when choosing a remediation method (the basic three being time, cost, and effectiveness): environmental sustainability and/or social responsibility. The most environmentally sound and socially responsible—as well as the least costly—decontamination methods are often in situ biological methods, such as phytoremediation (use of plants and/or algae to take up and/or break down toxins).

Unfortunately, time is often the most critical of the three priorities for businesses (and lenders). It’s much quicker to incinerate on-site, or just cart the problem away to dump somewhere else. Although biological techniques have the lowest out-of-pocket cost, their time cost is usually the highest.

That fourth “optional” criterion—environmental and social responsibility—will probably need to become mandatory before biological approaches achieve their rightful dominance. However, if measured in terms of the rate of R&D—rather than the level of current use— biological remediation may already be the dominant category. One increasingly popular option is ex situ (off-site) bioremediation: this combines the speed of hauling the problem away (which allows redevelopment to start immediately) with the low-energy, low-pollution, low-cost advantages of biologically based decontamination.

A recent Houston cleanup required the removal of 440,000 cubic yards of dirt, entailing 1,300 trucks a day being sent through the city throughout the project’s duration, a huge consumption of fossil fuels, and no small amount of noise pollution. The MetroNorth Corporate Park project (a Phoenix Award winner) in Arizona instead used a nonbiologi-cal on-site remediation method: an ultraviolet facility that removed peroxide contamination from the groundwater. Now, if the ultraviolet lights were powered by wind or solar electricity.…

Five Common Misconceptions About Brownfields

It shouldn’t be surprising that such a newly birthed industry would be poorly understood. Here are five of the most popular mistaken assumptions about brownfields.

Misconception #1: The primary purpose of the brownfields remediation industry is to clean the environment It’s vitally important that we realize, and openly acknowledge, that the principal driver of brownfields cleanup and redevelopment is economic, not environmental. Within the 141 brownfields industry, this economic agenda is out in the open; it’s outsiders who make bad assumptions about a project’s purpose.

Unlike the Superfund program, which was created to protect the public, the primary motivation behind brownfields cleanup is making a profit. Understanding this will help communities maintain vigilance over local projects. Such community vigilance, in turn, will help the entire brownfields industry avoid what might be its greatest threat: a public backlash against sloppy projects that threaten human and ecosystem health due to overly aggressive cost-cutting.

The chief priority of virtually all brownfields programs is to expedite the return of sites to a useful condition. Along with the speed of cleanup, the depth of legal protection (from environmental lawsuits) for developers and investors is another top goal. Other concerns—such as research, environmental justice, ongoing monitoring, or impact on local ecosystems—often lag far behind in priority.

Misconception #2: Brownfields contamination just involves the ground and groundwater We’ve probably been misled a bit by the term brown field. It’s not just the land that’s “brown”: buildings themselves are usually extremely toxic structures. Tearing down or renovating older buildings means dealing with challenges such as lead paint, asbestos insulation, PCBs (in electrical transformers), and mercury (such as in most vapor lights), not to mention whatever substances were used in the line of work the buildings housed.

Removing toxic building materials, plus normal rehab tasks such as demolishing masonry, ripping out plumbing, etc., are all considered “hard costs” (as opposed to “soft costs” like insurance and legal). Hard costs also include cleanup of the surrounding soils, which is where we find VOCs (volatile organic compounds) such as fuels and solvents; SVOCs (semivolatile organic compounds) such as lubricating (and some fuel) oils; pesticides and PCBs; plus heavy metals like cadmium, zinc, lead, and mercury.

Misconception #3: Most brownfields are heavily contaminated (basically just small Superfund projects) In fact, many have fairly minimal levels of contamination. In many instances, abandoned industrial sites sit idle for decades because they are assumed to be contaminated (such is our abysmally low level of expectation regarding the ethics of new-development industries). But nice surprises do occur, which is why a 142complete assessment of each country’s brownfields is so important. The ultimate pot of gold for adventurous communities and private developers is buying a cheap site that’s assumed to be contaminated, only to find it clean.

Misconception #4: Most brownfields are abandoned If we expand the definition of “brownfields” to include all contaminated sites (not just abandoned), those that are still in use—and which are often still being polluted—would actually be the largest category. Unfortunately, they aren’t even being inventoried, to the best of my knowledge.

The relationship between the growth of our brownfields inventory and our industrial decline is quite direct. For example, Lynn, Massachusetts lost 15,000 manufacturing jobs during approximately the same period that its catalog of available commercial properties was flooded with brownfields; about 80 percent, in fact. Between 1986 and 1997, 30 percent of the industrial acreage in Hartford, Connecticut was abandoned. Much of it was contaminated, and all of it was suspected of being so. Over 750 empty buildings stood unguarded, left to get vandalized, to turn into drug emporiums, or to deteriorate catastrophically from water damage due to leaky roofs and broken windows.

As reuse of abandoned property becomes the basic strategy of metropolitan economic development, cities are becoming better at quickly allocating funds to have someone “stabilize” abandoned sites, in order to maintain whatever value the sites have while awaiting revitalization.

The U.S. General Accounting Office estimates some half-million brownfields in the United States, but most observers feel this number is extremely conservative, even when limited to abandoned sites. Waiting until polluting companies fold (and their property sold) before assessing the contamination might not be the best strategy for public health.

Misconception #5: Brownfields are large industrial sites in urban locations

The truth is that brownfields can also be small and rural. In fact, rural sites might outnumber urban brownfields. Probably the most common are rural gas stations—both abandoned and operational—with leaky underground storage tanks. In 27 U.S. states, the EPA does not have the power to prevent a company from putting fuel or chemicals into an underground storage tank (UST) that is known to be leaking.

If you live in one of those states, and you see a tanker truck at a gas station, a portion of that delivery might be going straight into your local 143 aquifer; maybe into your drinking water, or that of someone in the neighboring county. Unfortunately, federal funding for UST cleanups has been meager in recent years. It’s getting an especially hostile reception from the Bush administration, which seems to take criticism of petrochemical industries very personally. Mark this category of brownfields as a colossal—and still ballooning—backlog of future restoration.

Our Militaries Don’t Just Kill Our Enemies

Remember that $6.28 billion in U.S. remediation revenues in 2000? The Department of Defense (DOD) paid only 14 percent of that, despite the fact that military bases often make industrial sites look like Martha Stewart’s backyard by comparison. The Pentagon’s small monetary contribution shows their continued resistance to cleanup. Cleanup of military bases is a job that will take decades, and is another lucrative backlog of work contractors can anticipate.

The brownfields challenge posed by the military forces of the world probably amounts to a multitrillion-dollar backlog, all by itself. The EPA estimates the backlog of military base cleanups to be $350 billion, a figure most experienced remediators consider extremely conservative. The General Accounting Office (GAO) was even more conservative—putting the number at $100 billion—and the Pentagon itself provided comic relief with an estimate of $14 billion. These figures, by the way, are only for cleanup of contamination at bases in the United States (we have about 1,700 installations worldwide). They do not include warfare-related cleanup, or the restoration of military buildings, heritage sites, ships, infrastructure, ecosystems, etc.

The U.S. military is among the most irresponsible (contamination-wise) among highly developed nations. In fact, the DOD is one of the few U.S. agencies that is actually resisting restorative development on some—not all—fronts. However, the armed forces of China, Russia, and dozens of other less-developed countries (those largely lacking environmental protections) are even worse.

The DOD is generally very enthusiastic about restorative development of its built environment, but its anti-green sentiments come to light when base redevelopers encounter contamination. This bias was recently illustrated by the “tentative legislation” the Pentagon floated in April 2002, designed to exempt the military from many environmental regulations. The attorney general of Massachusetts, Thomas Reilly, immediately sued the Pentagon. He was apparently unwilling to let the 144

Pentagon escalate what many see as chemical warfare on the American people by their own protectors.

During the Clinton administration, the Pentagon spent just $3.5 billion annually remediating contaminated bases, but most of that went to assessment (a legitimate need), not to actual cleanup. In 1998, the Defense Science Review Board, a federal advisory committee, reported that the Pentagon had no clear brownfields cleanup goals, policies, or program (despite its having an Office of Environmental Cleanup).

A Defense Environmental Restoration Program was created, but George W. Bush—normally a fan of restorative development—allowed his anti-green agenda to override his pro-restoration agenda. Even while pushing to increase the overall Pentagon budget by $14.2 billion, his administration is trying, at the time of this writing, to reduce the military’s remediation program by over 7.5 percent.

“Brownfields remediation” is a phrase that covers a lot of ground, ranging from posting a sign saying “Contaminated area: Keep out,” to deed restrictions forbidding residential use, to actual cleanup. That first example, “sign-based remediation,” is a favorite of the U.S. military. Budget restrictions are usually cited as the reason. Even when the military does an actual cleanup, it’s usually to “industrial use” standards for the same reason; “residential use” standards are simply too expensive.

Asbestos and lead abatement, as well as PCBs and gasoline/jet fuel/diesel/motor oil contamination, are found in all closed U.S. bases: they are givens. Many of the plumes of groundwater pollution are so extensive that people write books about them. In fact, the toxic plume from Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, inspired two books (both by Seth Rolbein), The Enemy Within: The Struggle to Clean Up Cape Cod’s Military Superfund Site, and About Face: Cleanup, Conflict, and New Directions on Cape Cod, published by and available from the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod, Barnstable, Mass.

With military bases, the threats left behind aren’t always as subtle as PCBs: many sites also include munitions contamination and unexploded ordinance (UXO). Buried bombs (and land mines) can ruin someone’s day just as thoroughly as PCBs, and much more quickly. The Army readily admits it doesn’t know how to handle UXO, especially when it’s not U.S. citizens who are at risk, as in Panama.

In 2001, Ray Clark, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army at the Pentagon, told me we could spend $10 billion removing munitions on U.S. bases, and that would only achieve 95 percent of the job. It’s rumored that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is going to add UXO 145cleanup to its mission in a big way; that’s a job that will keep many organizations busy throughout the twenty-first century.

The cleanup job we did when pulling out of Panama didn’t come close to that level. Even if it had, who but the most desperate would live or farm on top of a five percent residual rate of unexploded munitions? As with all brownfields issues, there are many unknowns: the Army estimated the cleanup of one former U.S. base in Panama, Ft. Sheridan, at between $35 million and $750 million. That’s a heck of a range, due mostly to insufficient assessment, along with not knowing which remediation technologies will be used (difficult to ascertain prior to assessment).

Redeveloping military bases became a significant growth industry with the collapse of the Soviet Union. When planned and executed in a transparent, collaborative manner with all stakeholders—and when the contaminated land or UXO is properly remediated—the redevelopment of closed military bases has been a godsend for many communities in the past decade. Such outcomes usually take people by surprise, because most towns panic and assume their economic life is over when a nearby base closure is announced.

What actually happens is that large new green spaces (such as for parks) suddenly become available, and a large amount of taxable real estate (such as industrial parks, residential developments, etc.) is added to the town’s assets. California has about a third of all the military bases that have closed in the past decade or two, and many of these sites have large expanses of green space—even important wildlife habitat. As a result, communities that foolishly developed all of their green space are getting a second chance. Many of these former bases are right in the path of development and sprawl, giving California an opportunity to once again be on the leading edge of a major national (and world) trend.

ISSUES AND INSIGHTS

This discussion of the brownfields industry is more heavily loaded with cautions than that of the other restoration industries, so readers may come away from the following section with the mistaken impression that 146 I’m not very excited by the brownfields restoration industry. Not true, but anytime we’re dealing with contamination, we’re on dangerous ground, so it’s sensible to be especially cautious.

We’ve already covered several sensitive issues in the body of this chapter; here are four additional considerations:

1. Brownfields redevelopment is inherently restorative, but the processes are not Each acre of redeveloped urban brownfields is an acre of greenfields saved, right? Well, not necessarily. As exciting as this field is, it is very much in its infancy. It’s in desperate need of workable standards set by organizations whose primary concern is human and environmental health.

What if those hundreds of truckloads of clean topsoil that now cover the remediated site came from healthy farmland or prairies? On one recent project, eight million cubic yards of topsoil were taken from green-fields and farmland to cover a slag heap slated for residential development. On the flip side, what if contaminated soils are dumped out in rural or tribal lands? What if vast quantities of fossil fuels are used to oxidize pollutants, thus contributing to global climate change, air pollution, etc.? All of these practices are common.

Some methods of removing toxins from dirt use solvents that leave their own toxic residuals. This is a classic case of following a prescriptive specification (“remove compound XYZ”) rather than a performance specification (“return the soil to preindustrial levels of purity as established by standard ABC”).

1. Increased involvement of local stakeholders is needed The USEPA has made great efforts to encourage public participation in brownfields projects, but yet more progress is needed. “Community involvement” is too often synonymous with “public relations.” The challenge with both environmental and social agendas, of course, is to achieve them within the bounds of time and money that will keep the project attractive to those taking the financial and legal risks.
2. Prevention of new brownfields must be better addressed One aspect of the industry that is grossly underdeveloped is brownfields prevention programs. There’s a ton of money to be made in cleaning and redeveloping properties, but many industries treat contaminating them in the first place as an affordable expense. Any fines that result are merely a predictable “cost of doing business” to be budgeted for. Worse, many industries continue to assume that the public will pay these expenses for them.

Some municipalities are on the ball, though: a major task of the brownfields pilot program of the West Central Municipal Conference of

Restoring Our Brownfields 147

Illinois was “to identify ongoing industrial activities that pose a risk of creating new brownfields.”

4. Moving into the next growth phase will require more standardization

Currently each state—even each major metropolis—has developed or modified rules, regulations, and redevelopment approaches based on its local needs, philosophies, and history. Thus, the formative period for the brownfields industry has been both rich in innovation and expeditious in deployment.

The brownfields industry is past the initial decade that comprised its birth, and growth has slowed. Maturing into its major growth phase will require increased national and international standards, not the least of which concerns public responsibility. Such standardization will include liability issues, regulations, financing models, research support, and quality standards. At the Huxley College of Environmental Studies of Western Washington University, faculty member Alan Lloyd grades the states on such factors. In 2001, only nine of the 50 got an A, with 11 Bs, 12 Cs, 5 Ds, and 13 Fs.

Restoring Chicago

A good example of how brownfields redevelopment revitalizes cities (and prevents further erosion of their economic base) is the story of Madison Equipment, Inc.’s aborted exodus from Chicago. This 70-employee firm needed to expand and was about to move to greenfields outside the city. But Chicago caught “brownfield religion” earlier than most cities and convinced Madison to consider expanding into a brownfield site which had a useful preexisting building, and which was adjacent to its current property. Madison Equipment and the city moved forward together, and the site assessment revealed only minimal contamination; it was effectively clean. So, for the price of a little research, the city kept a growing employer, and the company dispensed with an expensive and traumatic relocation. 148

Chicago is probably the leading U.S. metropolis in terms of integrating brownfields restoration into its redevelopment plans. Mayor Richard M. Daley couldn’t have made the importance of brownfields any clearer than when he reportedly said: “Industrial development in Chicago is brownfields redevelopment.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has so far identified 711 potential brownfields in Chicago alone (other surveys put the number over 2,000). Chicago is within the broad swath of the United States called the “rust belt,” so attracting the private resources necessary for revitalization required aggressive efforts, not just to stimulate opportunities, but to overcome that death-spiral image. It’s important to recall that cities possess great (though often underutilized) problem-solving powers, such as the ability to negate tax delinquencies, the ability to offer future tax incentives and/or low-cost loans, the right of eminent domain, etc.

Following Chicago’s Example

The general public doesn’t yet call it restorative development, but people know an improvement in their world when they see one. The next step will be when the public stops being pleasantly surprised by brownfields-based redevelopment projects and starts expecting them… even demanding them.

How common is it for metropolitan (and state) planners to recognize brownfields as being core to their city revitalization efforts? Here are some excerpts from the plans of cities and states around the United States, (quoted in Mark Dennison, Brownfields Redevelopment: Programs and Strategies for Rehabilitating Contaminated Real Estate, 1998):

---

A SAMPLING OF U.S. CITIES ON THE BROWNFIELDS REDEVELOPMENT TRACK

“Jacksonville’s objectives are to establish a redevelopment process with defined policies, procedures, and mechanisms that will restore brownfields sites into economically productive properties, create new jobs, and increase quality of life for nearby inner-city neighborhoods.”

149

“Maine’s goal is to use redevelopment of brownfields as a catalyst for revitalizing many communities.… [B]rownfields redevelopment is a key strategy for channeling development to these growth areas, many of which support historically significant buildings or water frontage.”

“New Bedford’s goal is to convert area brownfields into productive aquaculture sites [in response to the collapse of its fisheries].”

“The goals of the St. Paul Port Authority are to optimize the reuse of abandoned and underused industrial sites,… create increased employment opportunities for local residents, and generate sufficient tax revenues to provide services needed for long-term, ecologically sound, industrial growth.”

“Perth Amboy’s goal is to provide technical expertise, public/private support, and vision [for the] remediation and revitalization of the redevelopment area. The city aims to delineate contamination;… innovative technologies and site cleanup protocols; improve public accessibility to brownfields and risk information; and develop sustainable insurance coverage programs.”

The city [of Fayetteville, N.C.] has developed numerous partnerships, including Cumberland County, Ft. Bragg [home of the Green Berets and the 82^nd Airborne], and Fayetteville State U., to identify redevelopment opportunities, including brownfields, that will help to restore over 3,000 downtown acres to residential, recreational, educational, business, and industrial use.”

“Lima’s [Ohio] brownfields program will complement the river corridor redevelopment project, enhance water quality of the Ottawa River, and provide adjoining greenspace.”

“The brownfields inhibit the city’s ability to generate property tax revenue, create jobs,… mitigate environmental health risks, and abate crime and drug abuse. New Haven’s goals include remediating contaminated sites.…”

“Atlanta’s goals are to inventory brownfields within the Empowerment Zone, encourage industry involvement in brownfields redevelopment, provide environmental justice planning, and develop sustainable communities.”

“Kalamazoo intends to create a systematic approach for redeveloping underused and potentially contaminated properties in the city.”

“Concord’s [N.H.] overall brownfields goals are to identify contamination in a 440-acre industrial corridor, [and] develop a comprehensive remediation and redevelopment plan;… [besides] new [tax] revenue… the employment potential exceeds 2,500 jobs, or eight percent of the city’s total employment.” “Tulsa’s goal is to restore abandoned, idled, or underused industrial and commercial sites to productive use and create jobs.”

---

150

Gets a little repetitious, doesn’t it? That’s a good thing. But we’ve focused far too heavily on U.S. communities in relation to brownfields, so let’s pick a less obvious city for our final story. How about Istanbul?

A CLOSING STORY

As many U.S. cities have found, it’s hard to revitalize a city’s waterfront when the water is foul, and its stench ruins couples’ romantic al fresco dining experiences.

Such was the case with the area of Istanbul bordering the Golden Horn, the 4½ miles of waterway leading to the Bosporus Strait. This is the famed site where visitors can stand at the European end of the Bosporus Bridge (one of the longest suspension bridges in the world) and look at Asia at the other end. Sultans once rode the beautiful blue waters of the Golden Horn in their royal boats, but Istanbul went through its own new development-based economy. During most of the twentieth century, citizens walking or driving anywhere near the water would cover their noses in an attempt to keep out its foul odors, and avert their eyes from its depressing blackness.

Now, Istanbul is embracing restorative development with both arms, having already spent $500 million dollars restoring the Golden Horn area. Locals are even starting to swim and wade in it (not yet a safe activity), something that would have been unthinkably disgusting a decade ago. A profusion of aquatic vegetation is returning, and the city has removed 6,500,000 cubic yards of toxic mud, piping it into an abandoned stone quarry outside the city (an example of adaptive reuse?).

An Associated Press article was published by the Environmental News Network on November 27, 2001, titled “Turkey’s Bay of the Ottoman Sultans Recovers from Industrial Filth.” In it, writer Selcan Hacaoglu says, “Authorities have razed some 600 factories and a city-owned slaughterhouse that spewed filth into this fabled waterway.… [It] was once described by the Ottoman poets as ‘Sadabad’ or ‘place of bliss.’ [Resident] Ali Kaplan said the waterway ‘was like a cesspool.’ But it is getting better each day.… Fish are returning—though not yet enough to entice fishermen. Former Mayor Bedrettin Dalan, who first launched the cleanup in 1984, promised: ‘The color of the Golden Horn waters will be as blue as my eyes.’ “

Brownfields redevelopment still retains some peril for practitioners— although much more peril exists for society and wildlife. But society and wildlife are already at risk if redevelopment doesn’t happen. We’ve 151removed much of the danger to redevelopment companies and banks. Now, we need to make sure community and ecological health are equally protected. If practiced sloppily, unethically without sufficient assessment, and/or without sufficient integration with the other restoration industries, brownfields remediation risks becoming the equivalent of warding-off nuclear holocaust by painting “smiley faces” on bombs and missiles.

You’ve now gained a familiarity with a very sizeable industry that many people haven’t heard of, and that others consider very exotic and specialized. Let’s move on to a sector that almost everyone has heard of, and upon which we depend every day of our lives, but which few can even define properly, much less describe in any detail: public infrastructure.

---

A SMALL SAMPLING OF OPPORTUNITIES

Business and investment

• No restoration industry offers as many technological opportunities as does this one. Demand for safer and more efficient tools, reagents, and processes related to assessment, decontamination, and monitoring will grow explosively for decades to come. Ex situ bioremediation will be one of the hottest areas of growth for researchers and contractors.
• There’s an enormous need for consultants who can guide projects through the rapidly evolving maze of incentives, codes, laws, and insurance products, which differ substantially among cities, states, and countries.
• While expert consultants (above) can help maximize access to funds—and minimize exposure to risk—for actual projects, there’s a related opportunity to help investors and developers at a much earlier point in the process. Web-based (due to the daily announcements of new programs) services are needed, to help developers compare and evaluate cities and countries as to their friendliness to brownfields restoration and other forms of restorative development. A point-based system would greatly facilitate the initial stage of strategic planning. Such services would also help economic development planners compare their cities and countries to others competing for those investors, and see where improvement is needed.

NGOs and other nonprofits

This restoration industry is probably the one with the fewest not-for-profit entities. Whether due to the intimidating level of technical expertise required, or simply to the youth of the industry, the field is wide open. 152There’s a great need for professional associations and activist groups that can better integrate the many professionals involved in brownfields, set codes and standards, identify potential projects, raise funds, and share best practices.

Community and government

For decades, contaminated industrial sites and closed military bases have been synonymous with dying communities. In just over a decade, these “problems” have morphed into windfalls. Communities searching for dramatic economic growth opportunities need only look to these nonrevenue-generating former military properties to see their future.

---