Re: Date term Brownfields first used

["Peter B. Meyer" <pbmeye02@athena.louisville.edu>]

responding to Dan's query about 'brownfield" ...

The term has its origins in site selection and local economic
development work, actually predating CERCLA: a greenfield is a vacant
site; a brownfield is one with something on it ... site preparation in
this context was razing old buildings to effectively create greenfields
-- with no consideration of presence of contamination!  

It was an economic developmnet planner's term long before it arose in
the environmental arena -- and this means that the meaning of the term
is totally inconsistent across different literatures and periods of
time... This has created major problems at times for policy debates,
with people using the same label for very different sites, or issues.

I was using the term for ages in my economic development work, long
before I got involved with contaminated land work. Thus, the claim that
the term is somehow racist, which I have encountered, blew me away when
I first heard it...

-- 
Peter B. Meyer
Professor of Economics and Urban Policy
Director, Center for Environmental Management
 and Environmental Finance Center
University of Louisville
426 W. Bloom Street / Louisville, KY 40208
(502) 852-8032    Fax: (502) 852-4558