Issue Brief: BrownfieldsUpdated May 2003
Background
Brownfields are abandoned or underutilized commercial or industrial sites that often have environmental contamination related to their previous use, but are potential resources for community economic revitalization. Brownfields can include old manufacturing sites, gas stations with leaking underground storage tanks, obsolete office buildings with asbestos and lead contamination, abandoned lumber mills and mines, and former railroad yards, for example. The Government Accounting Office currently estimates that there are approximately 450,000 contaminated brownfield sites throughout the United States, which are not contaminated enough to qualify for coverage under the superfund hazardous waste cleanup program.
Redevelopment of these abandoned or underutilized sites can stimulate economic revitalization in the surrounding areas, and preserve green space by providing an alternative to unchecked urban sprawl. Yet many brownfields sites remain because funds are available neither to assess the presence and extent of contamination nor to clean up environmental hazards.
Recently, the Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act of 2001 (PL 107-118) was enacted into law (January 11, 2002) providing $1.25 billion to states, localities and Indian tribes over five years to help clean up brownfields. The law allows $750 million of the funds to be used for state revolving loan funds. State and local governments may leverage the funds by selling bonds.
EPA Activities
- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has provided funding in amounts up to $200,000 for up to two years to assess specific sites, to test proposed cleanup methods, and to look at the viability of projected future site uses. Grantees report that EPA funding so far has supported over 2600 property assessments and helped leverage more than $3.4 billion in cleanup and economic redevelopment monies.
- EPA has also selected over 129 revolving fund cleanup pilot projects (each funded up to a million dollars over five years) to capitalize loan funds that in turn make local cleanups possible. Over forty brownfields-related job training and re-development demonstrations projects have been funded up to $200,000 over two years.
- EPA also has launched nine brownfields prevention projects to showcase the flexibility of Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) corrective actions involving sites more heavily contaminated than those normally in the brownfields program.
- In addition to brownfields pilots, targeted brownfields assessments (TBAs) have been conducted by EPA and the States at more than 590 properties in local communities that may not have a brownfields pilot. TBAs provide funding or technical assistance for environmental assessments that promote cleanup and redevelopment of specific brownfields properties by providing useful information about cleanup methods and potential redevelopment strategies.
- EPA began accepting proposals on November 25, 2002, for grants to supplement State and Tribal Response Programs cleanup capacity. Since 1997, the EPA Brownfields program has been funding state and tribal response programs including Superfund Core funding for state and tribal voluntary cleanup programs and pre-remedial site assessment funding for state- and tribal-conducted Targeted Brownfields Assessments (TBA). PL 107-118 built upon these activities and provided EPA with expanded authority to fund other activities that build capacity for state and tribal response programs as well as authority to grant funds to states and Indian tribes to capitalize revolving loan funds and support insurance mechanisms. For fiscal year 2003, EPA will consider funding requests up to a maximum of $1.5 million per state or Indian tribe. EPA will target funding of at least $1 million per year for tribal response programs to ensure adequate funding for tribal response programs. This funding is not intended to supplant current state or tribal funding for their response programs. Instead, it is to supplement their funding to increase their cleanup capacity. EPA, on April 10, 2003, announced a new national initiative to incorporate land reuse into its Superfund, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Brownfields, and Underground Storage Tank hazardous waste cleanup programs. The "Land Revitalization Agenda" outlines 60 items that EPA can use to integrate land reuse into its cleanup programs throughout the country. Examples of these include: (1) EPA review of policies and practices concerning liability issues to promote, where appropriate, revitalization of properties, (2) EPA leveraging grant resources across multiple federal cleanup programs to facilitate area-wide cleanup and reuse of multiple contaminated properties, and (3) EPA piloting the use of written determinations stating that once-contaminated properties are ready for appropriate reuses.
HUD Activities
There are a number of programs available at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that communities can use to clean up and revitalize potentially contaminated sites: annual formula grants allocated to States and larger local jurisdictions through Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) and HOME, low interest loan guarantee authority available through the Section 108 Loan Guarantee program, and the accompanying competitive grants and loan guarantees through the Brownfields Economic Development Initiative program (BEDI).
Legislative Outlook
Several bills have been introduced in Congress to address remediation of brownfield sites; among them, are bills that would authorize issuance of tax-exempt and tax-credit bonds to finance the clean up of these sites.
Related GFOA Public Policy Statements
Additional Resources GFOA • Federal Liaison Center • (202) 393-8020 • (202) 393-0780 FAX • Email
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