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Sarah Gardner, Program Associate
Environmental Advocates
New York has, a land use crisis. Open space and farmland is being lost at a
rate of 1.5 percent a year. At this pace, another 30 percent of the state’s
open space will be lost in the next 20 years. The absence of statewide growth
management planning has permitted real estate developers to drive land use decision
making, resulting in an unplanned landscape marked by sprawling suburbs and
vacant central cities. By reclaiming land currently lost due to industrial contamination,
brownfield programs can redirect new projects to urban redevelopment and away
from open space. By reversing destructive land use patterns, brownfield redevelopment
is a key to smart growth.
Urban, suburban, and rural residents alike suffer from the negative effects
of brownfield sites. Defined as abandoned or underutilized tracts in urban areas
suffering from industrial contamination, brownfields do double damage. They
threaten public health while preventing economic revitalization of old industrial
areas and traditional downtowns. And by keeping vacant industrial and commercial
parcels off limits to developers, brownfield sites indirectly encourage new
development on farmland and open space, leading to suburban and rural sprawl.
“‘*Our cities are in crisis,” says Leslie Lowe, Executive Director
of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. “**New York desperately
needs brownfields legislation.”
Brownfields perpetuate environmental inequities. Brownfield sites are more prevalent
in low-income and working class communities and communities of color, which
put these populations are greater risk for exposure to environmental hazards.
Polluted sites that remain unaccounted for pose a continuing public health threat.
They leach toxics into the groundwater, disperse contaminants into the air,
and poison the children who play on them.
Brownfields aren’t just a problem, however. They are also an opportunity,
offering unprecedented promise for a new era of smart growth. Brownfields represent
a development frontier: their reuse signals hope for declining communities,
and helps relieve development pressures on the remaining tracts of open space
that suburbanites treasure. In some urban neighborhoods, brownfield sites are
the only hope for parks, playgrounds, and gardens in communities totally lacking
in green space. The triple goals of a brownfield law, then, is to limit human
exposure to toxic substances by cleaning up contaminated soil and groundwater,
to facilitate infill development instead of development on greenfields, and
to revitalize old downtowns and industrial areas.
Cleaning brownfields is complicated. Questions of culpability, for example,
are much more complex here than for other environmental issues. In most cases,
brownfield contamination was the result of practices permitted under earlier
unenlightened laws. And frequently, the present owner of the brownfield site
is not the original polluter. Liability in such instances is a thorny matter.
Other question, such as how clean is clean and who should pay cleanup costs,
continue to confound us. But, despite the complexity of the brownfields issue,
the problem cannot remain unaddressed: too much is at stake.
Under New York’s current state system, brownfield sites fall through the
regulatory cracks. While there are some piecemeal and underused state brownfield
initiatives, there is no comprehensive program in place. And unless a property
falls under the auspices of the state Superfund program, there are no hard and
fast rules governing site cleanup. There are no uniform cleanup standards, and
developers are therefore permitted to build houses or schools on contaminated
sites without remediating them first. More often, however, they just sit vacant.
“”What we have now is a no-man’s land,” said Jim Tripp,
Counsel to Environmental Defense. “The state has a Superfund program, but
it doesn’t apply to brownfield sites. The state has a voluntary cleanup
program, but nobody really knows what the rules of that game are. The whole
effort is a gray area that creates great difficulties for everyone involved,
from developers, to CBOs [community based organizations], to environmentalists.”
The current system makes it difficult to redevelop older cities. Joan Byron
of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development, works
with CBOs to develop day care centers, schools, health centers, and other facilities
in low- and moderate-income communities around New York City. “Every time
we want to do something with a site, we find out it’s a brownfield,”
she notes. “‘We’re currently building a day care center in a
commercial space that was a storefront dry cleaner and we found PERC in the
concrete slab. At best, contamination -delays projects by months or years, but
at worst, it causes projects to be abandoned because community-based developers
can’t deal with the uncertainly in the process or the high cost. Developers
may walk away from projects, because it’s a huge economic burden on the
developer to drag the project through the cleanup process.”
The current system has generated environmental tragedies. Because brownfield
cleanups are not regulated in New York State, horror stories abound. In Elmira,
for example, property for a school was bought from Remington Rand for $1 in
1972. A recently discovered spate of leukemia, lymphoma, and testicular cancer
among former students has shed light on the environmental conditions that existed
on the former industrial site. Records are unclear about whether a cleanup was
ever conducted at the site or not, despite the presence of a “rainbow colored
creek” and a “‘pond that never freezes.”’ Investigators
recently found arsenic, barium, nickel, mercury, and PCBs in the creek next
to the school.
The Hickory Woods site in South Buffalo is another example of the shortcomings
of the current system. Nicknamed the “‘*Love Canal of Brownfields,”
the housing development of about 200 homes was built on a brownfield site across
the street from a former coke plant and a steel plant. After residents complained
about unusual medical problems, including high incidences of brain cancer and
birth defects, the city investigated and found coke waste buried on the site.
The city spent $850,000 to remediate the property, but residents continue to
suffer adverse health effects.
These examples suggest that a comprehensive brownfields bill with clearly articulated
cleanup standards is long overdue.
The Brownfield Coalition is a diverse group of 104 public and private organizations,
including Environmental Advocates that has developed comprehensive brownfields
legislation. Members represent upstate and downstate interests, urban and rural
constituents, and private and non-profit organizations ranging from eco-justice
groups to development corporations. Why does the bill enjoy such broad support?
Because it will clean up contaminated soil and groundwater, it will help revitalize
urban communities, and it will provide developers with the assurance of clear
standards as well as the financial incentives and liability protection necessary
to stimulate redevelopment of environmentally questionable properties. New York
is one of the few remaining states without a brownfields law; by failing to
create a program, New York loses its competitive advantage over neighboring
states.
Albany Update
Several brownfield bills have been introduced this legislative session. There
is a Business Council bill (S4787/A3563), which does little more than subsidize
development of brownfield sites. Governor Pataki has also proposed a bill (S5274)
that is somewhat stronger on urban planning and community participation but
still deficient when it comes to groundwater protections, cleanup remedies,
and community empowerment. In addition, two bills were introduced by members
of the Assembly in late June. 9265-A and 9203-B are companion bills, the former
creates a brownfield program with financial incentives, strict cleanup goals,
public participation requirements, and liability relief, and the latter provides
programs and funding that target brownfield activity to localities and community
based organizations with the express purpose of promoting neighborhood based
planning and redevelopment.
1 Archibold, Randal C. “Specter of Cancer Haunts a School,” New York
Times, December 27, 2000.