[CPEO-BIF] New York Brownfields law and big developers

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

THE GREEN LADY
A landmark brownfields law mutates into a massive tax giveaway to the
Times and other big developers.

By Elizabeth Cady Brown
City Limits (NY)
September/October,  2004

IN WILLIAMSBURG, Brooklyn, Hasidic, Latino and African-American
residents are locked in a ferocious battle for living space. Yet 12
acres on the border between East Williamsburg and Bushwick stand empty,
save for barbed-wire fences and tangled weeds. The flat, bare land looks
tantalizingly easy to build homes on, but the problem is what lies
beneath. The soil contains a toxic mix of chemical pollutants that
seeped underground during the neighborhood's manufacturing days.

There are an estimated 7,000 plots like this across New York
City--contaminated by industry and scattered mainly in economically
depressed parts of the boroughs. These brownfields can sit festering and
vacant for decades because the cost of assessing, cleaning and insuring
an environmentally degraded site simply overwhelms the value of any
potential development.

A long-awaited state law, the 2003 Brownfield Cleanup Program, is
supposed to change all that. "Our focus was enhancing environmental
protections and public health," says the legislation's lead sponsor,
State Assemblymember Tom DiNapoli. "Related to that purpose is showing
there is a way to have a rigorous environmental program that succeeds
from the economic point of view. We want to create opportunities for
putting nonproductive properties back to productive use."

But nine months since the program's launch, New York City's applications
are primarily being filed by big developers doing expensive projects on
sites that have been in continuous use, are likely to have mild if any
toxic contamination, and indeed were already being developed before the
law was signed. One application came from Forest City Ratner and its
partner the New York Times Company for its $850 million headquarters in
Times Square. Another brownfield application was filed by the Related
Companies, for its plan to turn the 34-acre Bronx Terminal Market into a
$300 million retail center.

...

for the entire article, see
http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/articleView.cfm?articlenumber=1174 

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
_______________________________________________
Brownfields mailing list
Brownfields@list.cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org/mailman/listinfo/brownfields