What’s Happened in the 50 States This Year?

October 7, 2000
During 2000, the “state of the state” of brownfields continued to evolve and mature. Many different – but equally effective – approaches have been put into place to meet the multiple challenges and common objectives of brownfield reuse. Across the country, elected officials and program administrative staffs have made numerous efforts to make sure that their programs reflected local brownfield project needs, ran smoothly, and took advantage of opportunities to tie brownfield cleanup and redevelopment assistance with regulatory incentives.

In some cases, this involved administrative efforts to fine-tune rules or carry through on processes already authorized. But during this year, like each of the past half-dozen years, many legislatures considered a variety of brownfield proposals, and several continued to refine existing programs. A few states continued to experiment with their program offerings, putting new incentives – sometimes, at significant levels – in place. California, for example, will be launching a new $85 million Urban Cleanup Loan Program, to help developers, businesses, and local governments pay for site assessments and cleanups. Michigan has adopted a new 100 percent tax abatement to encourage site reuse in community designated “obsolete property rehabilitation districts.” More states are starting to link more diverse programs to brownfield situations; Florida, for instance, is earmarking part of its “Quick Response Training Program” to fund instructional programs for businesses located in designated brownfield areas. Other states have revised and streamlined their programs to make them more responsive and easier for participants. Arizona, for instance, has consolidated several variable approaches to entering its VCP into one, and made it easier to use. Finally, a few states are working hard at documenting VCP program progress and benefits; a new Texas survey has found that 97 percent of property transactions would not have occurred without the VCP.

This year, we’ve redesigned our “State of the States” survey report, combined the economic impact results with program-specific information into one table, and expanded the types of information collected. In our view, this reflects both the changing nature of voluntary brownfield cleanups and highlights some of the new, non-financial tools and incentives that states are using to make cleanups more feasible for new parties to undertake. For example, this year we have explored the extent to which VCPs permit common contaminants to be included – or excluded – from their VCP, and to what extent they promote or discourage the use of institutional controls.

And, in response to constant inquiries during the year, we have added more complete contact information on state programs, including web addresses, and we have also asked each state to identify the “best source” for information on their program.

Full information on all state changes this year are in the following tables. They update the October 1999 and November 1999 reports which received wide national circulation. Consistent with prior years, please note that:

• Eligible sites typically are limited to volunteers but include all types of contaminated sites except for Superfund, RCRA, or LUST sites, as well as landfills; exceptions are noted on the table.

• The most common assurance provided, as noted below, are “No Further Action” (NFA) letters, “Certificates of Completion” (COCs), and “Covenants Not to Sue” (CNTS).

• Some state are developing generic cleanup standards pegged to types of site use, and virtually all take future site use into consideration when running their voluntary cleanup programs. More and more states are using some type of risk-based corrective action approach (even if it is not a formal RBCA process).

• This year, the table provides more complete information on each state’s approach to cleanup standards, as well as information on whether or not the state VCP accepts sites with several common contaminants – petroleum, asbestos, lead-based paint, and PCBs. The table notes either “yes” or “OK” on each of these (sometimes, with certain conditions, such as being exterior contamination) – or simply “no”.

• This year, for the first time, we have tried to get information on state involvement with institutional or engineering controls which are growing in importance as they help bring remediation costs down. Some states provided more complete information on conditions and constraints imposed on ICs, as well as benefits they bring and concerns they carry.

Identifying “Financing Programs Targeted to Brownfields” and “Incentives to Attract Private Investment to Brownfields” continues to prove challenging; typically, in practice, the applicability of specific programs comes down to agency interpretation that brownfield-type site activities are eligible. This matrix includes programs directly available through state voluntary cleanup programs, as well as those identified by state agency staff as having consistent applicability to brownfield reuse efforts. The most common types of assistance include grants and revolving loan fund (RLF) initiatives. The table does not include federal resources passed through to states or cities that are widely available (except for a couple of instances noted, such as in the case of competitive EPA grants).

Like past years, we have tried to get information on brownfield program impacts and benefits – and like past years, this information has been very difficult to get. Most states have yet to gather hard economic information on their programs. Many programs are still too new to gain a handle on impacts; other states have not yet been able to find the resources to collect any data beyond the number of sites in their programs. Increasingly, though, states are finding that the benefits of brownfield reuse are worth their investments of staff time and program resources.

Consistent with prior years, we have tried to get information on five common redevelopment benefit areas, to help provide some sense of the impact of the various VCPs. The five are: number of sites that have entered the program and/or subsequently completed it; jobs created; housing units developed; tax revenues added to the local economy; and businesses created. Our results are noted in the “Economic Impacts/# of Sites” box in the center of the table. The table also provides each state’s definition of “brownfields” (when available) as a point of reference. Many states use the EPA definition of brownfields – abandoned, idled, or underused industrial and commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination.

As with previous surveys, information in these tables is based on telephone interviews, fax backs, and e-mail correspondence with environmental and/or economic development agency contacts in all 50 states. But this year, it became more apparent than ever how the level of brownfield reuse activity is outpacing (sometimes, overwhelming) the capacity of the state office staff assigned to administer these voluntary programs. Fewer states than ever (40) have responded to our survey, and several of the respondents cited their tremendous workloads for their delay in responding. Clearly, states will need to address these staffing issues at some point – as communities market more of their local sites to new users who need VCP action in a timely manner, and as greater use of institutional controls increases the need for state monitoring of sites where these controls have been made an integral part of the cleanup remedy. This lack of staff resources was cited by a number of states as the reason why they were not able to track their program’s economic impacts with any precision.

Therefore, we would like to extend a most sincere and hearty “thanks!!” to all of the state staffers who took the time to respond, often in great detail, about state program accomplishments, changes, and issues. We know – because we can tell by the time of the e-mail responses in many cases!! – that you have provided this information on your own time, because your work days have been filled with meetings and site inspections.

State Participation in MOAs

1 Kansas - negotiations underway 2 Mississippi - draft MOA sent to EPA Region IV in March 2000 for review and comment 3 Hawaii - negotiations underway

A final note - States designated with an asterisk (*) after their name have not responded to the 2000 survey, and the information shown is the most recent we have on file.

This report is copyrighted by the Northeast-Midwest Institute. Reproduction of this report, with the customary credit to the source, is permitted.

Charles Bartsch, is Senior Policy Analyst for Sustainable Development Studies and Bridget Dorfman, is Research Assistant Northeast-Midwest Institute