By Dianne P. Crocker
A site cleanup of an old auto manufacturing plant in Indiana. Vapor intrusion from a contaminated industrial plant migrating into a New Jersey community. A mixed-use redevelopment in a low income community of Detroit.
In the past, these cleanup efforts would be managed at the federal or state level with little interaction with the stakeholders who live and work around these properties. The explosion of interest in social media applications like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter has changed all that—and in a surprisingly short period of time.
Brownfields redevelopment in any community is challenging, but even more so in areas where environmental justice concerns come into play. Social media has created a powerful avenue for increasing awareness about contaminated properties in communities across the country. Individuals with a stake in how brownfield properties are cleaned up and reused now have new ways to exchange information, build coalitions of support or opposition, promote site cleanup initiatives, exert pressure on property owners, and ultimately, increase the potential for a better understanding about property environmental conditions.
The Rise of Social Media
Social media can best be described as Jason Falls’ did in a web seminar sponsored by commonground (www.commonground.edrnet.com): “as mediums, mostly on the Internet, that allow users to add or generate content to published works, creating conversations and sharing around the content and conversations.”
In just a few short years, social media has transformed the way that people communicate in both their professional and personal lives. At the end of 2010, Facebook had 153 million unique visitors and LinkedIn, 26 million. Twitter now has 190 million users, generating 65 million tweets every day. In business, regulatory and grass roots circles, the social nature of decision-making has increased dramatically, easily connecting professionals to each other, possibly changing the dynamics of how brownfield redevelopment projects move forward—forever.
To understand the reach of social media, consider these statistics:
Social Media and Brownfields
It didn’t take long before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, state environmental agencies and environmental watchdog groups began developing strategies to leverage social media applications for site cleanups. In 2009, EPA created its first Facebook group page for a cleanup site—for residents living around the Gowanus Canal Superfund site in Brooklyn, and a corresponding Twitter account to distribute environmental updates on cleanup efforts.
In February 2010, in an effort to address residents’ complaints about poor communication, EPA latched onto Facebook as a way to reach those individuals living over a plume of contaminated groundwater that had migrated from a nearby munitions factory, and is using Twitter to alert residents about community meetings. Similarly, a local advocacy group has its own Facebook page and Web site. These new outlets are being leveraged to enable situational awareness of brownfields efforts, allow interested parties to cluster around topics important to them and provide a launching pad for interactions.
(Editor's note: Ms. Crocker shed further light on this trend during a recent interview with Real Estate Weekly. When she first joined Environmental Data Resources in the late ‘90s, Crocker noted that real estate professionals conducted site assessments mainly to avoid legal action under the Superfund Act, which can hold current landlords responsible for past contamination.
She said these days “it’s much more about business risk. To ensure that investments are sound, developers hope to identify environmental risks before finalizing purchases, just like mechanics inspect new cars.”
Crocker and her team, who put together market intelligence reports, customized research, and educational seminars, have gone from working on cases like Kiddie Kollege Day Care, a pre-school in Franklin Township, N.J. that was built on a mercury-contaminated thermometer factory, to proactively investigating the history of thousands of properties throughout the Five Boroughs, according to the Real Estate Weekly article.
At Kiddie Kollege, the state allocated $1 million for the site’s cleanup and demolition, and recouped the costs from the facility’s landlord, a local real estate investor. The latter project, Crocker said, “was designed to support public and private stakeholders with brownfield redevelopment initiatives throughout the metro area,” she told REW.
In New Jersey, she added, her firm has recently begun looking into a handful of sites contaminated with petroleum, supplying more detailed research than that available online. On some Site Mart entries, for instance, details like wetland presence and remediation progress are listed as “unknown.”)
Environmental Justice Concerns
Social media also has important applications for addressing the environmental justice challenges faced in areas where many low income and minority residents live and work. According to Katrina Tavanlar at Booz Allen Hamilton, “research on successful brownfields redevelopment projects has shown that early and meaningful community involvement is critical to success.
However, traditional outreach and public participation tools are usually inadequate at reaching these disadvantaged, multi-lingual, and multi-ethnic communities.” The rise of Web 2.0 and the wider use of social media tools such as mobile campaigns create opportunities for much greater engagement of low income and minority communities in brownfields redevelopment.
In just a few shorts years, Web 2.0 has revolutionized the way information about brownfield site cleanups is being disseminated to interested parties. Best practices are being established by early adopters and new creative ways are being developed to engage minority and low-income communities in redevelopment efforts.
There is much to be gained from regulators and interested stakeholders working together more closely and early on in the process to facilitate bringing contaminated sites back into reuse.
Dianne P. Crocker is Managing Director, Market Research Group Environmental Data Resources, Inc. One mode of contact is via Dianne’s Twitter account: dpcrocker
