[CPEO-BIF] New York Brownfields Opportunity Areas

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Another voice / Urban revival
Governmental inaction blocks use of brownfields law

Opinion by Judith Anderson and Mathy Stanislaus
Buffalo News (NY)
October 27, 2007

Everybody claims to be searching for ways to stimulate the upstate 
economy, yet Albany is sitting on millions of dollars that have already 
been appropriated by the State Legislature for the redevelopment of 
contaminated lands known as brownfields in Buffalo, Niagara Falls and 
other Western New York cities. Local communities have identified more 
than 1,800 brownfield sites for economic development.

Reclaiming abandoned brownfields brings contaminated lands back into 
productive use, so a robust brownfield redevelopment program is critical 
to Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer’s upstate redevelopment strategy. This is what 
the State Legislature intended when it passed New York’s landmark law in 
2003.

The Brownfield Opportunity Area (BOA) program, a visionary aspect of the 
law, is a unique area-wide planning and economic development tool 
designed with the recognition that an individual, property-only approach 
will continue to bypass low-income neighborhoods abandoned by the 
marketplace. Each year since the brownfields law was passed, the 
Legislature has appropriated up to $15 million for the BOA program.



...

For the entire column, see
http://www.buffalonews.com/149/story/193349.html

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
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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