The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently went for the green. To reclaim and redevelop the nation’s estimated 450,000 polluted “Brownfields,” in February HUD proposed doubling the agency’s current funding from $25 million to $50 million. Brownfields are mildly to moderately polluted former industrial sites that sit idle across the American landscape. Most are located in urban areas. They include old rail yards, steel mills, corner gas-station lots, and dry-cleaning shops. These parcels thrived in an era when industrial pollution was an accepted part of American life. When that changed, owners sometimes chained the gates and fled.
Today, Brownfields are eyesores and no man’s lands. They are not contaminated enough to merit detoxification under the stringent criteria of the nation’s Superfund. Yet they are not “clean” enough to allay the fears of local government and potential investors over the costs of cleaning them up to meet present-day environmental standards, preclude potential future law suits, or overcome public skepticism about even setting foot on them again.
After decades of neglect, however, something new is in the air. Businesses, government-local, state, and federal-community organizations, and environmentalists have decided to look again at these badlands and reclaim them for use. The Environmental Protection Agency has awarded more than 120 grants to municipalities to rehabilitate Brownfields. Environmental groups that once blocked recertification have gotten practical and agreed to a sliding scale on the “degree of purity” needed to relicense such sites. New technologies have been developed that have effectively lowered cleanup costs. And state legislatures have written new statutes that, while enforcing adequate environmental principles, protect the public and shield investors from unexpected future costs, if the cleanup has followed rigid state-approved plans.
Still, is it a good idea for HUD to get involved? Eminently. Seed money of this sort attracts other money needed to revive the languishing tracts, which in turn creates new industries and businesses where they are most needed: in poor urban centers. Recently, 125 workers started harvesting tomatoes at a new industrial greenhouse in Buffalo, built on the site of a former steel mill. According to HUD, the $50 million it plans to spend this year on Brownfields will leverage an additional $200 million in loans and loan grants, generating 28,000 jobs. Jobs mean housing and family stability: a greener future all round.
