[CPEO-BIF] Editorial - Connecticut funding

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Restoring brownfields

Editorial
Waterbury Republican American (CT)
March 8, 2008

Brownfields were high on Gov. M. Jodi Rell's agenda in 2006. She 
understood that restoring industrial and commercial sites idled by years 
of pollution is good for the environment and the economy. So she created 
the Office of Brownfield Remediation to coordinate what continue to be 
ineffectual government programs and formed a task force to study 
brownfield issues.

Now, however, when she can put action behind her words about reclaiming 
"fallow, vacant, underused properties" and "growing jobs and helping to 
preserve open space," she is balking at following her task force's 
recommendation to appropriate $200 million over the next five years for 
brownfield remediation. At issue is the state spending cap, the same cap 
under which sufficient space exists for her 2008 priority: 100 new 
troopers to nab speeders fleeing economic tyranny.

Brownfields are a huge issue for Connecticut's economically depressed 
cities. The state has tens of thousands of brownfields and restoring 
them would bring in new businesses and jobs, and broaden the tax base. 
But huge swaths of urban land have been rendered unsalvageable by strict 
environmental regulations that make acquisition and cleanup needlessly 
costly, risky and time-consuming.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2008/03/08/opinion/323169.txt

-- 


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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