a epa The Brownfields Issue
Region 9 • San Francisco, California	April 1995
The Redevelopment of Urban Industrial Lands
Restoring contaminated property
can go hand-in-hand with bringing
life and strength to a community
through increased jobs, an en-
hanced tax base and a sense of
optimism about the future. The
purpose of EPA's Brownfields
Initiative is to make it easier for
such sites to be redeveloped and
become, once again, vital, function-
ing parts of their communities.
"Brownfields" are abandoned, idled
or underused industrial and com-
mercial facilities where expansion
or redevelopment is complicated by
eal or perceived environmental
contamination. Frequently, these
properties, once the source of jobs
and economic benefits to the entire
community, lie abandoned for fear
of the contamination and the
liability it implies Instead, compa-
nies leave these brownfields in the
urban coreand head for the pristine
"greenfields" outside the cities.
While the "polluter pays" principle
of some of our strongest environ-
mental legislation has prevented
pollution by making it clear that
companies are responsible for what
they do to the land, many develop-
ers have shied away from acqyiring
and using land that they fear may
already be contaminated Lenders,
too, fearful of inheriting cleanup
liability for contamination they did
not create, avoid making loans for
"uch properties. As these properties
re abandoned, so are the commu-
nities surrounding them. The
departure of businesses and jobs
can mean the decline of the com-
munity.
Under EPA's Initiative, attention
and resources are focused on
several fronts simultaneously:
¦	EPA will award 50 Brownfields
Economic Redevelopment Pilots of
up to $200,000 each over the next
two years. These pilots will support
creative demonstrations of redevel-
opment solutions.
¦	The San Francisco Regional
Office has initiated a project with
the City of Oakland, California and
other regulatory agencies. The pilot
is a redevelopment project to
develop classes of sites defined by
specific criteria Once classes are
defined, default cleanup levels for
specific compounds of concern will
be established for each class of site.
¦	EPA is working with states to
encourage the development of State
Voluntary Cleanup Programs so that
owners or developers can clean up
the sites themselves with state
oversight. The San Francisco
Regional Office and the State of
California's Department of Toxic
Substances Control are working
cooperatively so that those partici-
pating in California's Voluntary
Cleanup Program are assured that
when they have completed the
state's program, EPA will be
satisfied
¦	To promote the concept of
sustainable development, EPA is
pursuing job training and develop-
ment activities. EPA is working
with the Hazardous Materials
Training and Research Institute to
expand training and curriculum
development to at least 20 commu-
nity colleges located near
Brownfields pilots. The San Fran-
cisco Regional Office is launching
a joint program with the U. S.
Department of Labor to design an
environmental training program at a
Job Corps center in the region.
¦	EPA is working with other
federal agencies, including the
Economic Development Adminis-
tration of the U.S. Department of
Commerce, the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture
and the U.S. Department of Labor.
The goal of this segment of the
Brownfields Initiative is to leverage
and coordinate federal resources
promoting economic development,
job training and community em-
powerment at local Brownfields
sites. EPA is also working closely
with states, municipalities, busi-
nesses, environmental communities
and their representative organiza-
tions

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