Underused and idled properties, often referred to as surplus properties, make up the bulk of America’s brownfield supply. These are often owned by small businesses and/or corporate entities. (See Chris Olson’s article on rural surplus corporate sites on the following page.)

Surplus properties are easy to spot in urban areas and business districts because they typically have some type of structure on the property. And former use of the site is often held in common knowledge by the community, as that facility most likely employed a large number of the community’s residents.

In rural America, however, a surplus property is not quite as easy to spot. And harder yet is determining whether it is a brownfield. Why? Because rural surplus properties include farmlands and lands where natural resources have been extracted from beneath the surface. When these lands fall idle, lack of any permanent structure on the property surface makes it hard to tell from appearances alone if the property is indeed in surplus. Without a proper assessment, guessing what possible residual pesticides and other hazardous waste contaminants are present is most likely futile because of the rural nature of the property setting. Large isolated properties often do not get a lot of community visibility and hence, there is a typically a lack of common knowledge about property use, especially in the case of illegal dumping.

To understand the magnitude of the potential for surplus property in rural America is to realize that 71 percent of land, or 1.4 billion acres, in the lower 48 states is rural and has nonfederal land use (U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, 2002). That opens up a lot of opportunity for surplus property in rural locations.

Rural communities are not blind to these facts and have been engaged in responding to issues of surplus property and illegal dumping even before brownfields became a framed concept. With the help of GIS technology, many communities are now mapping out the surplus properties and their existing illegal dump sites. In doing so, they are helping to develop a greater common knowledge of rural properties.

For example, with the help of GIS mapping, the Yurok Tribe in Northern California cleaned up Humboldt County’s Weitchpec dump—a 40-year-old illegal dump—in 1996. More recently, the City of Anderson, Ind., (pop. 59,000) has been able to offer complete mapping profiles of three former General Motors plants now owned by the city on its Web site (www.cityofanderson.com/brownfields). They also offer listings of land parcels.

National and private entity Web sites are also fueling assistance on identification of surplus properties in rural America. Sites like www.usedplants.com and the Industrial Asset Management Councils’ clearinghouse listings include unimproved lands that are corporate surplus properties.

Even though the task of identifying surplus property in rural America might seem daunting, there is proof that it is not impossible. Through technologies such as GIS mapping and Internet Web sites, the task is doable. What is more, communities continue to be proactive in building up a knowledge base about rural properties that is accessible and visible. But there is still the reality that economic down turns and limited resources make it difficult for rural communities to address the majority of brownfields that are in surplus.

Kelly Novak is a doctoral student and research assistant at Virginia Tech.