ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING - BROWNFIELDS pot

Concurrent with the federal use of brownfields, several local and state governments adopted the term for their efforts to bring about economic revitalization.. This article discusses th

BROWNFIELDS

The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM)

defines brownfields as “abandoned, idled, or underutilized

properties where expansion or redevelopment is

compli-cated by the potential or confirmed existence of chemical(s)

of concern.” The U.S Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA) Web page states, “Brownfields are abandoned, idled,

or under-used industrial and commercial facilities where

expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or

per-ceived environmental contamination.”

In the mid-twentieth century, brownfield was a planners’

term for urban blight Brownfields had existed for decades,

perhaps centuries, but a strong focus on cleaning up these

properties did not happen until the 1970s (see Table 1)

Concurrent with the federal use of brownfields, several local

and state governments adopted the term for their efforts to

bring about economic revitalization Most governments

have adopted specific legal definitions of brownfields

These definitions reflect differing environmental and

eco-nomic conditions but have strong similarities to the federal

definition

In everyday language, a brownfield is an area that is

con-taminated or perceived to be concon-taminated Most brownfields

can be redeveloped, revitalized, and reused after assessment

and cleanup The EPA’s brownfields program helps

commu-nities work together to create jobs and put abandoned

prop-erties back into productive use The EPA, together with other

federal, state, and local agencies, provides funds,

coordina-tion, and advice for the cleanup of brownfields

Politically, brownfields have been contrasted to

“green-fields.” Greenfields are rural areas that are in danger of being

converted to industrial areas The goals of many

brown-field programs include saving farmland and open spaces

in addition to putting brownfields back into industrial use

Development of greenfields can be economically and

envi-ronmentally problematic, because it means building

ship-ping and utility infrastructures that are essential for most

industrial development Development of brownfields can be

economically and environmentally more desirable because

they often have utility connections like water, sewer, and

electricity as well as train access with sidings Further, cities

and counties can regain or enhance their tax base by cleaning

and redeveloping brownfields

This article discusses the history of brownfields, lists

some common and legal definitions, discusses the

associa-tions with social justice and banking issues, and gives a case

study of a showcase community that demonstrates creative

successes It does not discuss the associated new urbanism movement within architecture and urban planning

HISTORY The history of brownfields is intertwined with the history

of hazardous-waste cleanups and the EPA In the 1960s the United States grappled with the challenge of many unused and contaminated facilities These properties were across the United States, from the shuttered steel mills in Pennsylvania and Cleveland to mining operations in Montana and Arizona

to closed timber mills in Washington and Oregon The facili-ties represented many industries, including closed smelters, metal-plating factories, machine shops, and chemical plants Many facilities had complied with the few environmental regulations of the early 1900s

In response to a fire on the Cuyahoga River, President Richard Nixon created the EPA in 1969 by presidential directive The new EPA was faced with such media disas-ters as Love Canal, the Valley of the Drums, and Bridgeport The EPA began regulatory efforts with the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, closely followed by regulations to control hazardous substances In 1976, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) initiated cleanup regulations In 1980, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, or Superfund) ushered in two decades of federal Superfund cleanups Many states created analogous legislation and regulations From 1984 to 1995, Superfund cleanups were financed by a tax on the industries that synthesized or manufactured chemicals

In response to the widespread economic-development obstacles posed by urban brownfields, the EPA announced its original Brownfields Action Agenda in January 1995 Brownfields were an adaptation from the EPA cleanup-enforcement-driven pattern over to economic and environ-mental local collaboration with support from the EPA The impetus to bring about this change came from several large Midwest and East Coast cities that led the movement to revi-talize their abandoned industrial areas with funding from federal and private sources Initially, both the EPA and the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundations funded a series of brownfield forums in Chicago in the early 1990s These forums developed a set of brownfield redevelopment principles that have been adopted, adapted, and standardized

Brownfields time line

Brownfields Timeline 1976 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 2000 01 02 03

Resources Conservation & Recovery Act

(RCRA)—1976, 1984

Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA)—

1976

Waste-treatment facility fire, Bridgeport,

New Jersey—1977

Children hurt at waste dump, Love Canal,

New York—1978

Discovery of Valley of the Drums site,

Kentucky—1979

Comprehensive Environmental Response,

Compensation, & Liability Act

(CERCLA or Superfund)—1980

$1.6 billion tax-funded trust fund

authorized—1980

Environmental Justice Movement, Warren

County, North Carolina—1982

Superfund Amendments & Reauthorization

Act (SARA)—1986

Superfund trust fund increased to $8.5

billion—1986

Brownfields Initiatives announced—1993

Small Business Liability Relief and

Brownfields Revitalization Act—1993

EPA Brownfield Action Agenda—1995

CERCLA/SARA tax on chemical &

petroleum industry sunsetted—1995

Brownfield National Partnership—1997

Superfund Redevelopment Initiative—1999

Brownfield Initiative/Harvard’s Innovation

in Government Award—2000

Expanded Brownfield Cleanup Revolving

Loan Fund—2000

Relaim Pennysylvannia—cleanup of

mining grayfields—2002

Nationwide movement to clean up

abandoned grayfields—2003

162 BROWNFIELDS

Some of these principles have become engineering practice

in the “Standard for Process of Sustainable Brownfields

Redevelopment” from the ASTM

In association with the forums, the Chicago Brownfield

Initiative began with a pilot cleanup and redevelopment

pro-gram in 1993 The Chicago Department of Environmental

Protection, in partnership with the mayor’s office and

the Chicago Departments of Planning and Development,

Buildings, and Law, coordinated the brownfields pilot

pro-gram The pilot program involved the cleanup up of five

abandoned polluted industrial sites and initiated

redevelop-ment The five pilots resulted in new construction activity

and the creation of jobs The city’s experience with these

sites became a national model for continued innovation at

large-scale cleanups

Chicago shared its experiences by hosting another

brownfield forum to discuss the legal, financial, and

ethi-cal issues related to urban disinvestments The forum, which

included business leaders, industrialists, environmentalists,

bankers, regulators, and city officials, generated a list of

rec-ommended actions to facilitate brownfield cleanups and

rede-velopments Cities across the United States began to use the

successful Chicago-recommended actions Chicago revisited

its forum recommendation in late 1997 to assess local and

national progress This conference increased national

atten-tion and validated the work since the first conference More

urban areas took the model and made it theirs

One city that took the model and made it theirs is St Louis,

Missouri St Louis, like many older cities, had deteriorated

commercial districts that imposed a blighting effect on

sur-rounding residential neighborhoods St Louis began one of

the earliest brownfields programs in the mid-1990s By 2000,

St Louis had cleaned up many sites using the brownfields

approach Mayor Freeman Bosley detailed the experiences

at several sites in congressional testimony In one targeted

area, the city paid to assemble, clear, and clean a corner site

critical to the shopping district’s viability According to the

mayor, the owners of this area had not been able to command

sufficient rent to maintain their property When cleanup was

accomplished, a private company invested in what is now a

thriving commercial business district that provides

employ-ment, generates sales, and helps to attract patrons to other

retail and eating establishments in the area

On May 13, 1997, Vice President Al Gore announced the

Brownfields National Partnership Action Agenda (National

Partnership), outlining the EPA’s activities and future plans to

help states and communities implement and realize the

ben-efits of the brownfields initiative The National Partnership

brings together federal agencies to address brownfield

clean-ups and redevelopments in a more coordinated approach

AGENCIES, CITIES, AND UNIVERSITIES INVOLVED

IN BROWNFIELDS

The other seven federal agencies involved are: the

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD),

the Department of Transportation (DOT), the General Services Administration (GSA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the Department of Labor (DOL), and the Department of Energy (DOE) HUD administers the Brownfields Economic Development Initiative (BEDI) as the key competitive grant program to stimulate and promote economic- and community-development activities under Section 108(q) of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 Through BEDI, HUD administers these grants

to stimulate local governments and private-sector parties

to redevelop or continue phased redevelopment efforts on brownfield sites where environmental conditions are known and redevelopment plans exist The DOT has multiple approaches to support transportation-related brownfields by funding cleanups as part of its infrastructure development, work with other agencies on brownfields for transportation-related uses, encourage consideration of transportation access

in redevelopment planning, and identify policies that dis-courage transportation-related brownfields redevelopment With thousands of federal properties located throughout the country, the GSA is partnering with communities to ensure that underutilized federal properties are an active component

in the redevelopment of our nation’s urban centers NOAA has a signed agreement with the EPA to lay the groundwork for revitalizing aging port-city waterfronts The DHHS spec-ifies essential services to be provided by its health-related agencies and the larger public-health community that must

be applied to each brownfields project to assure public-health protection The DOL, through its Office of Environmental Management, Office of Intergovernmental and Public Accountability, has developed an electronic access (Internet-based) system to provide technical assistance and increase community members’ capacity to understand and resolve environmental issues related to brownfields The DOE provides technical assistance in brownfield efforts from its Headquarters Program Offices and the National Laboratories and Technology Centers

Many major urban areas, through both cities and coun-ties, have associated with the federal brownfields, and some have continued their own brownfields efforts Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a city that develops brownfields innovations

in association with Carnegie Mellon University while it contin-ues to work with the EPA Another city with a strong university affiliation is Cincinnati, Ohio, where collaboration with the University of Cincinnati provides training and environmental-justice support and broadens community affiliations

COMMON AND LEGAL DEFINITIONS The EPA and other environmental- and health-protection agen-cies base their regulations and implementation on science Most often they adapt technical definitions that are measurable and science-based into regulations The terms surrounding brown-fields do not follow this pattern Brownbrown-fields definitions bring

a community-based sensibility The complexity and plasticity

of brownfields begins in the definitions and continues through

implementation

Legally, the EPA uses the definition of brownfield

in Public Law 107-118 (HR 28869), the Small Business

Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act, signed

into law January 11, 2002 This definition says that “within

certain legal exclusions, the term ‘brownfield site’ means

real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of

which may be complicated by the presence or potential

pres-ence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.”

Following the definition are pages of exclusions that

marily detail sections of other laws with priority The

pri-mary statutory authorities citied are: the Clean Water Act,

as amended in 1977; CERCLA of 1980, commonly called

Superfund; the RCRA, as amended in 1984; the Superfund

Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) of 1986;

the Medical Waste Tracking Act of 1988; the Great Lake

Critical Programs Act of 1990; the Clean Air Act of 1990; the

Clean Water Act of 1990; and the Housing and Community

Development Act of 1992

On many publications and Web pages on brownfields,

the EPA discusses them as “abandoned, idled or

under-used industrial and commercial facilities where expansion

or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived

envi-ronmental contamination.” This definition facilitates the

EPA’s Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative in

empowering states, communities, and other stakeholders

involved in brownfield revitalization to work together on

redevelopment

The definitions of brownfields by states are varied, as are

the patterns of implementation They vary from Missouri,

with one of the oldest and most defined brownfields

pro-grams; to Washington, with an operating program without a

definition; to Alaska, with no definition or program

Missouri’s complex definition of brownfields comes

from its 1995 brownfields legislation in Chapter 447 of

the Revised Statutes of Missouri (commonly known as

the Brownfields Redevelopment Program) The Missouri

Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) and the Missouri

Department of Economic Development jointly have the

fol-lowing definition To be a brownfield in Missouri, a project

must meet two criteria:

1 All projects must enter and be accepted into the MDNR

Voluntary Cleanup Program which provides property

owners with oversight of and concurrence with all cleanup

activities

2 A project will be considered eligible if it meets the

fol-lowing criteria:

(a) The property must have been abandoned for at least

three years or underutilized Real property is

under-utilized if less than 35% of its commercially usable

space is used for its most commercially profitable and

economically productive use

(b) The property is owned by a local, state, or federal

gov-ernmental agency, or by a private party who is to the

potential responsible party, and the project is endorsed

by the local municipality;

(c) The property is contaminated, or perceived to be con-taminated, by a hazardous substance; and,

(d) The property is planned to undergo redevelopment for a commercial, mixed-use, or industrial use that

is expected to create at least 10 jobs or retain at least

25 jobs, or some combination thereof

The state of Washington discusses brownfields as “the short-hand term for historically contaminated and underutilized or vacant industrial property” on its Web page In some litera-ture it defines brownfields as “properties that are abandoned

or underused because of environmental contamination for past industrial or commercial practices.” However, there is not a definition in any state statute or regulation If the public thinks a site is a brownfield—it is Nevertheless, Washington maintains an active brownfields program, with a showcase project in Seattle and King County as its model That project

is discussed in the case study below

ASSOCIATED ISSUES: ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND BANKING

Many contaminated properties are located in areas such as older urban centers, where a high proportion of the residents are minorities, have low incomes, or do not have English as their first language These common problems reflect the economic limitations faced by disadvantaged individuals Therefore, dis-advantaged communities must overcome special barriers to effectively advocate for their community interests during the review and permitting of projects with potential environmental impacts This created environmental injustice In 1982, Warren County was the poster child for environmental injustice and documented racism That year, citizens banded together and made the Warren County PCB landfill protest a seminal event for the environmental-justice movement The North Carolina Environmental Justice Network (NCEJN) was formed, and it became a catalyst that galvanized people of color in the fight for environmental justice The struggle in Warren County was the spark that lit that national environmental-justice movement

in the 1980s

In its most basic interpretation, environmental justice (EJ) is the principle that all people have the right to be pro-tected from environmental pollution and to receive a fair share of environmental benefits It combines environmen-tal protection with considerations of nondiscrimination and civil rights Many organizations have been formed on the model of the NCEJN to support these principles locally Additionally, governments have provided support through agencies such as the Oregon Governors Environmental Justice Advisory Board

EJ policies seek to level the playing field by providing disadvantaged communities with technical and organiza-tional support, by providing special scrutiny for proposed projects in EJ communities that might result in significant

164 BROWNFIELDS

environmental impact, and by offering incentives for certain

desirable types of development, including brownfields EJ

policies go beyond brownfields However, brownfields are

an effective means for advancing EJ principles

When HUD administers brownfields grants, it has EJ

requirements HUD works with community organizations,

the private sector, local and state governments, and other

federal agencies to provide equitable reinvestment in

com-munities with fair employment opportunities Other

agen-cies, such as the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease

Registry’s Office of Urban Affairs, are actively involved in

issues such as public-health issues that are linked to EJ

Bankers make lending decisions that affect

brown-fields Initially, bankers chose to lend on greenfields, rather

than brownfields, because brownfields bring unpredictable

expense and liability—this despite the fact that greenfields

may be more expensive because of the infrastructure that

needs to be built The unpredictable expense and liability

of brownfields came from the wide variability in cleanup

and associated legal costs Without some predictability

for cleanup and liability costs, banks were biased toward

the more predictable greenfields without infrastructures,

like rail connections, sewer, water, electricity, and nearby

communities to provide The EPA’s brownfield program

brought predictability through its multiagency

collabora-tive approach This approach, combined with funding, often

overcame the reluctance of bankers to fund the

develop-ment of brownfields Additionally, bankers rely on

techni-cal standards developed by other fields to make decisions

With the engineering standards that have been developed in

the 1990s such as the “Standard for Process of Sustainable

Brownfields Redevelopment” from the ASTM, banks have

reliable technical standards Finally, banks are members of

the community and are positively influenced by brownfields

because of the community support and process

From the success of the brownfield cleanups, an associated

movement to clean up grayfields has developed “Grayfields”

are defined as blighted or obsolete buildings sitting on land

that is not necessarily contaminated Grayfields range from

aging shopping malls in the suburbs to mining reclamation

across the Pennsylvania countryside Many regions hope to

have grayfield successes using some of the partnerships and

methods developed by brownfield programs

SEATTLE AND KING COUNTY CASE STUDY

Case studies are written discussions of a topic containing an

applied example of the topic Case studies are used in legal,

business, and environmental studies There are many case

studies to select from, because from 1993 to 2000, the EPA

has provided over $250 million in brownfields funding in the

form of grants and loans More that 50 brownfield-related

job-training and redevelopment demonstration projects have

been funded Projects have ranged from innovative test pilots

for heavily contaminated areas in large cities to small

com-munities with a large brownfields

The case study below discusses a brownfield showcase community initiative in Seattle, Washington, that uses dif-fering levels of technology and different levels of private– public cooperation at several sites The Seattle and King County Brownfields Initiative was one of the 11 initially funded under the EPA Brownfields Showcase Communities Initiative The funding comes through the King County and Seattle Offices of Economic Development and has been renewed because of a track record of successes

This initiative has two tracks First, several small busi-nesses have received assistance from the brownfields pro-gram that has enabled them to return contaminated industrial properties to productive businesses Second, area-wide proj-ects have made cleanups more attainable for all businesses under their umbrellas

One of the businesses receiving funding was an auto-wrecking yard, All City Wrecking, that has been cleaned up and redeveloped as a neighborhood store and gas station This 2-acre site supported a family-owned auto wrecking yard for

30 years As the owners neared retirement, they ceased oper-ating their business with the hopes of selling their property The presence of contamination posed challenges to that sale The site was contaminated with oil, petroleum products, and heavy metals The Environmental Extension Service (EES),

a contractor under the grant, was able to help this business overcome the difficulties of addressing the contamination The EES provided free assistance at every stage of the project The EES helped the owners properly dispose of liquid wastes on the site, and obtained a local matching grant

to defray disposal costs The EES then assisted in selecting and hiring consultants to perform both the assessment and cleanup on the property, reviewed and interpreted consultant reports for the owners, and made recommendations for how

to proceed with assessment and cleanup Within approxi-mately 8 months, the All City Wrecking site underwent environmental testing, cleanup, and compliance monitoring This process ended with a “No Further Action” designation

by the Washington Department of Ecology and has enabled this property to be sold, redeveloped, and recycled for a new productive use as a neighborhood store and gas station There were many such cleanups that were facilitated by the umbrella projects described below

Two wide-ranging projects facilitated the cleanup of all properties in their respective ranges The largest, Washington’s newly established risk-based cleanup stan-dards for total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH), was state-wide The other project was the localized Duwamish Corridor Groundwater Study This study characterized the groundwater in a heavily industrial area that has been cre-ated with material dredged from the river and washed from the hills and documented that the groundwater was not a drinking-water aquifer Both of these government efforts had the effect of streamlining projects and reducing the cleanup costs The more flexible TPH cleanup standards enabled this project to clean the soil up to a commercial, rather than a residential, cleanup level The groundwater study, funded by King County from state and federal grants,

helped to streamline the evaluation and regulatory process

for each site Both reduced the time needed to collect

back-ground information on sites, thereby lowering the costs of

site evaluation

This and other brownfield cleanups in Seattle and King

County were facilitated by:

1 A 5-year project to improve the science for

char-acterizing and guiding the cleanup of

petroleum-contaminated sites statewide The changes to state

law recommended by this project were ecological

as part of the revisions to Washington’s Model

Toxics Control Act Regulation

2 An interagency project that provided the

Duwamish Corridor Groundwater Study of an

industrial area by a river that is important to

ship-ping The area included parts of south Seattle and

adjacent King County

3 The creation of a technical-assistance center

(the EES) run by the nonprofit Environmental

Coalition of South Seattle (ECOSS), which

pro-vides direct, door-to-door assistance to

manufac-turing and industrial businesses in environmental

cleanup and pollution-prevention practices

4 A revolving loan fund for environmental cleanup

for which a partnership among King County, the

city of Seattle, the city of Tacoma, and the state of

Washington manage the EPA grant money

CONCLUSION

Brownfield programs are a highly successful phase of

envi-ronmental cleanups in the United States The first phase was

science-based and regulation-driven cleanups That phase

began in 1976 and continues to this day Occasionally, these

cleanups involve economically viable properties that go

right back into use More often, the cleaned-up sites involve

abandoned, idled, or underutilized properties In those cases,

the expansion or redevelopment is complicated because of

the potential or confirmed contamination Therefore, the

brownfield approach was added in 1993 as a phase that

ideally works with the cleanup and then continues through

redevelopment The two approaches continued concurrently

When the federal tax to fund Superfund cleanups was

sun-setted in 1995, the number of cleanups began to decline As

Superfund monies run out, brownfield funding will become

more important Brownfield programs coordinate agency and

private-sector interests to work together to create jobs and

put abandoned properties back into productive use Problems

may arise when the brownfield cleanups are underfunded, the local economy is weak, or cooperation is not achieved Despite these obstacles, brownfield pilots and projects have been documenting success stories for over a decade Brownfields have sparked social economic movements such

as EJ and economic revitalization of grayfields

The next phase of environmental cleanups has not yet arrived Currently, brownfield programs are active across the United States Their goal is to have all contaminated sites cleaned cooperatively and put back into use If cleanup and brownfield sites remain clean and no further sites are cre-ated, cleanup programs may work themselves into obso-lescence Related movements like EJ and grayfields begun from brownfields will separate as their goals differ However, brownfields are likely to remain at a smaller and increasingly more sophisticated level for decades

REFERENCES ASTM, Standard for Process of Sustainable Brownfields Redevelopment, E-1984–98, November 10 (1998), published January 1999

http://discover.npr.org/rundowns/segment.jhtml?wfld=1760130 http://dnr.metrokc.gov/swd/brownfields/demonstration.shtml http://environment.fhwa.dot.gov/guidebook/vol1/doc7c.pdf http://state.nj.us/dep/srp/brownfields/bda/

http://stlcin.missouri.org/cerp/brownfields/stlouis.cfm http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/OUA/RRCMH/borwnf.htm http://www.brownfields2003.org/

http://www.ci.chi.il.us/Environment/Brownfields/History.htm http://www.cpeo.org/lists/brownfields/1997/00000118.htm http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/local_gov/envirodir/toolkit_g.htm http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/

http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/glossary.htm http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/html-doc/97aa_fs.htm http://www.epa.gov/R5Brownfields/

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/biblio/97608.html http://www.ecy.wa.gov/ecyhome.html http://www.environews.com/Features/env_justice.htm http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contenteId=10033&con tentType=GSA_OVERVIEW

http://www.hmdc.state.ng.us/brownfields/history.html http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/economicdevelopment/programs/bedi/ index.cfm

http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/economicdevelopment/programs/bedi/ index.cfm

http://www.metrokc.gov/exec/news/2000/120500.htm http://www.nemw.org/brown_stateimpacts.pdf http://www.nemw.org/cmclean1.htm http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/oct1702.html http://www.planersweb.com/w226.html International City/County Management Association, Brownfields Blue-prints, A Study of the Showcase Communities Initiative, 2000 United States Environmental Protection Agency, Brownfields, Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (5102G), EPA 542-B-97-002

LEE DORIGAN

King County Department of Natural Resources