[CPEO-BIF] New York's Governor Spitzer proposes Brownfields reform

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

 From Governor Eliot Spitzer's
State of Upstate Address
Buffalo, NY
January 16, 2008



To fully address the shortage of development-ready land Upstate, we must 
also face the hard reality that New York's Brownfields cleanup program 
is failing.

This program was enacted in 2003 to provide incentives to remediate 
contaminated land for new development. However, the program's formula is 
broken, and - as a result - it too often provides massive taxpayer 
subsidies for development that would have happened anyway. For example, 
we don't need to be using millions of taxpayer dollars to underwrite a 
luxury condominium project in Westchester while 3,000 acres of 
brownfields in Rochester await investment.

Therefore, this year, we will submit new and improved legislation to 
reform our Brownfields program so it can fulfill its original purpose of 
creating development-ready sites where they are needed most, while also 
protecting our environment.


For the entire speech, go to
http://www.ny.gov/governor/keydocs/0116081_speech.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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