A Brownfield Gone Bright

Brockton, Massachusetts, a former industrial town of nearly 94,000 people, has certainly had its share of fame and notoriety. It is the birthplace of heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano and the setting for the apprehension of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italian immigrants arrested for alleged robbery and murder in 1920.

Photo courtesy of Schott Solar. Solar panels take in the sun just outside a home in Brockton, Mass., where residential areas grew up in industry’s backyard for the convenience of walking to work.

A thriving center for shoe manufacturing, Brockton was built on the back of industry. But its greatest legacy, perhaps, is one of technological innovation. It was here in March 1883, where famed inventor Thomas Alva Edison opened the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Brockton. And by October of the same year, he threw the switch giving Brockton the first three-wire underground system which evenly distributed electricity through a central power station, a system eventually utilized globally.

Today, much of the industry has moved out, leaving behind the scars of its once proud heritage in the form of brownfields. But Brockton has not given up its spirit of innovation, nor is it willing to settle for living on past merits.

In October 2006, Brockton took a piece of its industrial past and thrust it headlong into the 21st century by completing not only the largest solar power plant in New England, but also the nation’s largest brightfield—a brownfield redeveloped for use as a solar energy generating station.

The Brockton Brightfield sits on 3.7 acres of remediated land that belonged to the Brockton Gas Light Company, which closed in 1963. Its 1,395 solar panels generate some 530 megawatt hours of electricity annually, “which, in real people terms, is enough to power about 71 homes for a year,” says Lori Ribeiro, brightfields project director for the City of Brockton.

While this is the city’s first brightfield, it is familiar enough with brownfields to have its own brownfield program, for which Ribeiro serves as coordinator.

“The city is about 97 percent developed. So to have any form of economic development, it needs to redevelop its brownfield properties,” she says.

“There is an economic corridor, so to speak, that goes up and down the city on a north/south line, which more or less parallels the railroad that went through back in the industrial era. About a third of that land area was considered brownfields. About half of that is developed.”

Despite its experience with brownfield redevelopment, the Brockton Brightfield proved a greater challenge in terms of both the scale and nature of the project, as well as the financing, policy and technical issues that accompanied it.

Among the first hurdles to overcome was community buy in, particularly in cities like Brockton, where residential areas grew up in industry’s backyard for the convenience of walking to work.

“Today, people don’t want to live next door to foundries. So anytime you go to redevelop a brownfield, you have to think about what the residential impact is going to be,” says Ribeiro.

Initial community reaction to the project was one of confusion, both over the mechanics of solar energy production and the potential hazards they associated with it, similar to the allegations that high-voltage emission lines cause cancer.

The city held a community meeting during which it explained the technology and plans for the site, and addressed three advantages to redevelopment—solar energy doesn’t produce emissions; there is no generating plant being developed, thus not a lot of traffic; and it doesn’t produce any noise.

The information disseminated at that meeting helped the community embrace the solar power concept, as did the fact that project dollars were going to be spent locally. For example, SCHOTT Solar, located in nearby Billerica, Mass., produced the solar panels and local electricians did the installation.

But tired of the blight that surrounded the former gas company property, concerns soon turned to aesthetics.

“What we did was, we designed it as a solar energy park,” Ribeiro says. “We put very attractive fencing and landscaping around it and added an educational plaza so that it could be used to educate the general community and schoolchildren about solar energy, how to convert a brownfield into a productive asset, and learn about local history, too.”

But the ground-mounted solar panels were more than just a productive asset, they served as the ideal solution to a site crippled by decades of cumulative coal tar and coal ash deposits produced by the former gas plant. Bay State Gas Company, the responsible party, capped the site with approval from the Massachusetts DEP. This remedy does not allow for the construction of buildings in order to maintain the integrity of the cap and to allow for monitoring.

Despite the fact that Brockton was redeveloping a brownfield and pursuing renewable energy resources, there were no pre-existing grant programs from which to solicit financial aid. So, the city had to string together nearly a dozen smaller grants to back a $3.6 million budget.

As the responsible party, Bay State handled all of the brownfield issues associated with the site, including site remediation. While this was a positive turn, it meant that Brockton was ineligible to receive brownfield grants.

Another financial drawback was Brockton’s position as a municipality. Federal incentives for the development of solar power are based on tax credits. But, since cities are not subject to state or federal taxes, they had no access to that financial mechanism.

So Brockton turned to the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust, which turned out to be something of a benefactor to the project. It provided funding for a feasibility study, as well as a revenue guarantee and a grant to conduct educational programming. And, after several months of justifying an investment in their project, Brockton received $1 million to construct the facility through a Trust grant administered by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

The brightfields project also received several small solicitations from federal agencies, including one grant for $59,000 from the Department of Energy (DOE)—“which is nice but it doesn’t go very far,” says Ribeiro—and a larger federal appropriation from the DOE.

In addition to the financial hurdles they had to maneuver, there were numerous policy barriers to overcome, as well. Any hope of the project’s success rested on the State Legislature’s approval of two pieces of special legislation—one for the development of an electrical generation facility, the other to rescind several land use issues associated with the site.

In the 1970s, the gas company deeded one of the parcels to the city, but restricted use of the land to open space conservation and recreation purposes. Subsequently, the Massachusetts Legislature enacted Article 97 of the State Constitution protecting open space land.

“So, even though it had never been used as a park or recreation facility, it was now protected open space land, and in order to use it for a solar power plant, we needed a two-thirds vote of both houses of the State Legislature,” explains Ribeiro

They also had to overcome some particular nuances of Massachusetts’ financing laws. For example, the laws that govern municipal borrowing only allow for 10 years on alternative energy projects, while this particular project required 20-year financing.

After six years of grant writing, lobbying and winning acceptance, the Brockton Brightfield was completed. Sights are now set to expand the project to a second parcel across the street with similar issues.

This one, notes Ribeiro, will require even more time and effort to raise the funds needed to complete the project.

“On the one hand, I sometimes think it (Brockton Brightfield) was a little too much effort given the amount of energy that it is actually producing,” she says. “But on the other hand, I think that for doing innovative projects like this, somebody has to be the first. And then through that process you identify the barriers and you can then eliminate them for other municipalities who want to do renewable energy projects.

“It’s worth it in that this particular parcel is now not only an energy-generating resource, but it’s an economic, environmental and aesthetic asset in the community.”

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