[CPEO-BIF] Coporate welfare?

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

[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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