Hi, may name is Sam Goodhope and my favorite color is blue....ok, ok...
I am a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Texas. I was
an original member of the Defense Environmental Task Force ("DERTF"),
which was involved with the cleanup and transfer of closing bases, and
a member of the Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration Dialogue
Committee ("FFERDC"). Many of the issues involved with the transfer of
federal facilities, such as the transfer of dirty property, institutional
controls, future land use, cleanup to future land use, risk assessment and
management, transferee liability, indemnification, and prioritization, appear
to be involved in brownfields cleanup and redevelopment. Indeed, my
suspicion for years has been that the private sector real estate folks and
insurance folks were behind many of the "innovations" adopted by the
federal agencies, such as dirty transfers, cleanup to future land use, and
the use of institutional controls. Of course, the case for the federal
agencies during the last four years was compelling--the federal agencies
could save a heck of a lot of money by not complying with the law and
environmental cleanup practices as they stood in 1992 or 1993. The
cleanup program became driven more by bean counters instead of the
"true" cleanup folks at the respective agencies.
Be that as it may, it is important that many of the "innovations" adopted by
the federal government be looked at with a circumspect eye before they
are adopted into the brownfields area. Hence, my involvement with the
Newsgroup...by the way, my favorite rocker--Neil Young, of course......