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This article raises an issue I had mentioned several months ago.
There does not appear to be any systematic effort to determine if there are viable PRPs for the sites that are being awarded brownfield grants. Given the current economic realities, it would seem to me that EPA should make an effort to recover brownfield grants from PRPs while protecting grantees/developers from contribution actions.
Currently, plant owners have no fear of abandoning plants and exporting jobs knowing the cleanup mess they leave behind is probably going to be footed by the taxpayers thru brownfield grants. I have been involved in a few projects where PRPs who have been identifie have been willing to donate funds to a worthy redevelopment project in exchange for liability relief but these occurances are far and few between.
If you take a look at the announcements in Plant Closing News, many companies closing or abandoning plants are consolidating operations elsewhere in the country while others exporting the jobs remain viable entities within the US. We need to make sure that we are not creating moral hazards by letting these plant owners off the hook. A little more enforcement would at least help to replenish funding for brownfield grants and might even result in creation of fewer new brownfields.
Larry
Schnapf Law Offices
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-----Original Message-----
From: Lenny Siegel [mailto:lsiegel@cpeo.org]
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 01:26 PM
To: 'Brownfields Internet Forum'
Subject: [CPEO-BIF] Should taxpayers pay for brownfields? The Allegheny County, Pennsylvania debate
Allegheny exec aspirants disagree on who should clear sites By Mike Wereschagin PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW (PA) April 19, 2011 Some of the key components to Allegheny County's future lie among the relics of its old economy, but the men vying for the county's top job disagree on how to reuse the polluted industrial sites abandoned by heavy manufacturing. Redeveloping these brownfields was a centerpiece of County Executive Dan Onorato's economic development strategy for the past seven years. Now the candidates running to replace him disagree on how and whether taxpayers should foot the bill to clean up the sites, and three of the four question how effective Onorato's strategy has been. County officials don't know how much they've spent cleaning up the sites, but their 2011 budget includes $44 million in state grants for rehabilitating brownfields and other land around Pittsburgh International Airport. ... For the entire article, see http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/ s_732871.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 http://www.cpeo.org _______________________________________________ Brownfields mailing list Brownfields@lists.cpeo.org http://lists.cpeo.org/listinfo.cgi/brownfields-cpeo.org
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