Brownfields Sites for Opportune Eyes

The following appeared in the Times Union on April 21, 2003

(By Ned Sullivan) - A 15-acre contaminated industrial lumberyard on Irvington's Hudson River waterfront has been transformed into a park with ball fields, a playground and a senior center.

In Yonkers a county park and public esplanade next to an environmental education center and new housing, restaurants and shops are under construction on previously contaminated property.

On the Beacon waterfront, massive fuel tanks and a junk yard have been removed and cleaned up to make way for a state-of-the-art "green design" hotel and conference center with many public amenities next to the world-class Dia art gallery.

In Highlands the site of an auto repair shop will provide a rest stop and overlook adjacent to Fort Montgomery, the Revolutionary War site.

These exciting Hudson Valley developments show the potential of "brownfields" - former industrial and commercial properties that lie fallow because they are known or thought to be contaminated.

After working for several years with the Pataki Administration and county, local and private parties to advance these projects, Scenic Hudson has joined the legislative debate to reform New York's brownfield laws, which often hamper cleanup and reuse of such properties.

Hazardous waste sites with high levels of toxic contaminants threaten the public health and environment. Brownfields, which often have only trace levels of residual contamination, also impede economic development on waterfronts and in core areas of New York's cities. Many are in poorer minority neighborhoods, where contamination and abandoned buildings often thwart redevelopment and revitalization.

There are opportunities in the Capital Region, including 17 separate properties spanning three miles of the City of Troy's 7.5-mile Hudson River waterfront that are brownfields.

The King Fuels site on the Troy waterfront, previously owned by Niagara Mohawk, would provide significant development potential if the contamination were cleaned up.

Risks from contaminated sites gained national attention in the late 1970s, when toxic chemicals were discovered in the basements of homes near the notorious Love Canal in Niagara Falls.

Congress and New York State passed laws to address the problem, backed up with substantial money - Superfunds that empowered the government to clean up sites if the polluter refused. Now both the federal and state Superfunds are nearly bankrupt.

There has never been serious funding for brownfields or a focused cleanup program on the scale of the Superfunds. Nor is there likely to be given the enormous costs - there are thousands of Superfund sites nationwide and hundreds of thousands of brownfields.

Still most states have enacted laws that set out a strategy for the cleanup and reuse of brownfields, based on incentives to attract development. New York is not among them. Here, potential brownfield users face not only the costs of cleanup without government assistance, but also the risk of new liability.

No wonder developers stay away, choosing instead the relative ease of pristine suburban and rural real estate - causing sprawl and the loss of farmland, open space and rural character.

The state Senate recently passed a bill addressing both hazardous waste and brownfield cleanups. Sponsored by Sen. Carl Marcellino, a Long Island Republican, the bill contains three key elements: a rational approach to determining how stringent cleanups should be, property-tax abatements and other financial incentives to encourage private volunteer cleanup efforts, and provisions that would allow funding of community visioning redevelopment activities around brownfields.

Gov. Pataki deserves credit for proposing legislative reform and new funding for both programs two years ago, but his bill has not garnered the needed support from both houses and reappeared this year without the tax breaks that are essential to leveraging private dollars. Without financial incentives, a brownfields program is pretty hollow - a fact that the Senate clearly understands.

Meanwhile, the Assembly is working diligently on its own bill.

In the past the Assembly has been the staunch and reliable protector of public health and the environment through its advocacy of strict cleanup standards.

The families living in the communities burdened with brownfields deserve no less. But the burdens will continue unabated without the incentives needed to attract cleanup and development dollars and an efficient process for gaining Department of Environmental Conservation input and sign-off on cleanup plans.

We look to the Assembly and Gov. Pataki to work with the Senate to hammer out and pass legislation and funding that entails a comprehensive strategy for getting brownfields cleaned up and reused. After more than seven years of debate, this must be the year for action.