2006 CPEO Brownfields List Archive

From: Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>
Date: 14 Dec 2006 06:59:59 -0000
Reply: cpeo-brownfields
Subject: [CPEO-BIF] Coporate welfare?
 
[The editorial board of a major "rust-belt" newspaper is asking some the same questions participants in this list asked recently in our "subsidies" discussion. - LS]

Green into brownfields: Return on investment?
  			

Editorial
December 13, 2006
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (PA)

Cleaning up old industrial sites -- so-called brownfields contaminated with the legacy of our industrial past -- and supporting their redevelopment with public money sounds like a grand idea, doesn't it?

Until you try to find out if the public "investment" has yielded adequate returns.

For example, in Jeannette, Westmoreland County, $11 million in federal, state and local funds was spent on an old glass plant where now only 72 people are employed.

In Pittsburgh, the South Side Works, a former steel factory, was cleaned up and on it are shops, offices and apartments. But to achieve that, the public contributed at least $95 million.

Nobody really knows if the gain justifies the spending, and as is typical of government feel-good programs, brownfield projects expand beyond cleanup into corporate welfare

For the entire editorial, see
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/archive/s_483856.html

--


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


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