Gary O’Connor, partner, Pepe & Hazard law firm, Waterbury, Conn.
O’Connor served as co-chairman of a brownfields task force in Connecticut and said that when it came to setting up a revolving loan fund to be administered by the DECD, the resistance from the state budget office was fierce. “We worked the legislature hard, and they did too,” he says. “This was several years ago, before states were facing these huge budget deficits, and we couldn’t understand it.” As of March 2010, the state had distributed only $4.5 million in brownfield cleanup grants since 2006, while the task force originally recommended $16 million in funding. During the past three years, O’Connor says, approximately $36 million has gone to Connecticut brownfield projects through various state and federal programs, but the task force’s original proposal had requested a commitment of $200 million in state brownfield program funding to be spent over six years. “That’s a step in the right direction, but we’d like to see an annual total of $75 to $100 million,” he says. (The good news in Connecticut is that Gov. Jodi Rell in July signed two bills designed to expand the state’s brownfields development program that will provide greater opportunities for regional project development, establishing new sources of funding and offering tax incentives as long as developers adhere to a state-approved remediation plan.)