If you are receiving this email it is because you are actively involved in helping to ensure that development in your community leverages cutting edge innovations in sustainability to integrate
the built environment with the natural environment. Accordingly, this distribution is primarily intended to reach out to our network of local government officials, community redevelopment agencies, community development corporations, community based organizations,
and private developers as well as the architects, planners, civil engineers, and environmental consultants that support them. We encourage you to further distribute this information as you deem appropriate.
We’ve written a number of times in the past about the brownfields grant funding that EPA has historically made available to Florida local governments, regional planning agencies, economic development entities, academic institutions, and
non-profits. We’ve done this to encourage those who are unfamiliar with the program and its fantastic record of success to invest the time and resources necessary to prepare and submit competitive grant applications.
With Florida continuing to perform exceedingly well nationally in terms of federal grant awards and with the U.S. EPA Brownfields Conference, which provides more access to grant related workshops, planning sessions, and panel discussions
in any one place at any one time than any other venue in the country, bearing down on us fast, we are again encouraging local governments, non-profits, and other eligible entities to evaluate whether federal brownfields funding would be appropriate for your
community or constituency (short answer: yes, it would be).
To help the uninitiated get up to speed quickly, we’ve developed and a comprehensive set of materials analyzing every single grant ever awarded to a Florida eligible entity by U.S. EPA beginning in 1996 and continuing through May of this
year - a total of $42,795,692.00 in funding. (As an important aside, EPA’s economists have found that each federal grant dollar sparks $17.79 in private sector capital leveraging.) These materials, which can be found at
http://we.tl/lEWHE4zJV1,
through August 28th, suggest the following:
·
If you work for or have been elected to represent a city or town and you have a compelling story to tell (and otherwise meet the criteria), the likelihood of your application being approved is very high. EPA has awarded 107 grants
totaling $22,554,000.00 to 31 entities just like yours.
·
If you work for or have been elected to represent a county and you have a compelling story to tell (and otherwise meet the criteria), the likelihood of your success is very high. EPA has awarded 32 grants totaling $8,210,000.00
to 11 entities just like yours.
·
If you work for or have been appointed to serve on a Regional Planning Council, Metropolitan Planning Organization, Redevelopment Agency, or Non-Profit and you have a compelling story to tell (and otherwise meet the criteria),
the likelihood of your success is very high. EPA has awarded 34 grants totaling $10,839,396.00 to 11 entities just like yours. Note to all of you non-profits out there: Only two of your Florida peers have been awarded grants to date. The numbers are in
your favor! We would love to see more non-profits take up the cause.
·
If you work for an academic institution and you have a compelling story to tell (and otherwise meet the criteria), the likelihood of your success is very high. EPA has awarded 5 grants totaling $1,392,266.00 to 2 entities just
like yours. Four of those 5 went to Florida State College of Jacksonville. Note to all of you colleges and universities out there with sustainable environmental reuse programs: Put your shoulder to the wheel. There is so much opportunity for you – and for
the students and community stakeholders who would benefit from your leadership and resources.
Here is a quick guide to what we’ve done in preparing our analysis and the corresponding attachments:
1. We dug into EPA’s brownfields grant database* and analyzed every grant award to Florida starting with the very first grant in 1996 and ending with the very last grant in 2015. We summarized all of these grants (178 by our count) and
collected them into a single, massive spreadsheet. Every single assessment grant, cleanup grant, planning grant, job training grant, and revolving loan fund ever awarded to a city, county, community redevelopment agency, regional planning organization, university,
and non-profit in Florida can be found on this document (in chronological order) analyzed by grantee, award date, grant type, and amount. We also added narrative descriptions for each grant, taking verbatim from the EPA Grant Fact Sheets that can be generated
by accessing the database link. We call this spreadsheet “All Entities, Grants” and it is enclosed as the first attachment above.
*If you want to explore the grant database yourself (which we encourage), it can be found here:
http://cfpub.epa.gov/bf_factsheets/index.cfm?grant_type_id=1001&grant_announcement_year=
2. We then broke down each grant by awardee type and placed all of that data into separate spreadsheets. We have one spreadsheet for cities, one for counties, one for regional planning organizations, metropolitan planning organizations,
community redevelopment agencies, and non-profits, and one for academic institutions. Each of these spreadsheets is labeled with the word “Metrics” to reflect the emphasis that we placed on summarizing numerical data, such as the year in which a grant was
awarded, the amount of the grant in that year, and the total amount of grants received by an entity for all years that a grant was award. Also, we wanted to dispel the myth that an applicant needed to be above a certain population size to be successful, so
we went into the most applicable U.S. Census (as determined by date of grant award) and added that metric for each city and county. As you will see, population size is absolutely
not determinative of grant success. (Hello, City of St. Marks: Current population 297. Number of grants received 4. Total grant awards received: $800,000.00.)
3. We’ve also created “home pages” for each grant award recipient that combines a numerical summary of grant data with a narrative description of each and every grant ever awarded to that entity. This is a very effective way to see how
a redevelopment strategy has unfolded over time and how new priorities present themselves and additional neighborhoods are brought into the redevelopment fold. Clearwater, Tampa, Tallahassee, Escambia County, Central Florida Regional Planning Council, to
name a few, are all excellent examples of this long-term approach to pursuing and implementing federal brownfield grants. You can find this second level of analysis in the four spreadsheets we have marked as “Almanacs.”
4. One program note with respect to the Almanacs. They are, as you will see, works in progress because we have included place holders at the bottom of each page for local government project manager contact information, environmental consultant
contact information, and “factoids” relating to the preparation of the grant application and implementation of the grant award. If you are a local government project manager in charge of administering a grant or a consultant that worked on a grant, we would
very much appreciate hearing from you so we can add this context to our next iteration of the spreadsheets.
Bottom line, there are 42,795,692 reasons for Florida local governments and non-profits to apply for brownfield grants from U.S. EPA, as this number represents the total dollars awarded in our state to date, including $16,895,000.00 in
funding for assessment and remediation of sites contaminated with hazardous substances, $17,000.000.00 in funding for assessment and remediation of sites contaminated with petroleum, $6,410,364 in early stage funding for a variety of purposes, and $1,892,000
for environmental workforce job training. But there are so many other ways to look at this program beyond direct dollars, and you are urged to do so. As those of us who are in the trenches can attest, the benefits ultimately enjoyed by communities receiving
brownfield grants far exceed what can be monetized. They encompass expanded access to public health care, more effective and protective environmental restoration, more drivers for job creation and higher paying jobs, innovations in sustainable design and
climate stewardship, improved and closer connections between living places and working places, and an increase in meaningful access to economic opportunity and social and environmental justice for disadvantaged communities.
Please feel free to call or write with any questions or comments. Thank you.
Best regards,
Michael
Michael R. Goldstein, Esq.
The Goldstein Environmental Law Firm, P.A.
One SE Third Avenue, Suite 2120
Miami, FL 33131
Direct Telephone: (305) 777-1682
Cell Phone: (305) 962-7669
Facsimile: (305) 777-1681
Email: mgoldstein@goldsteinenvlaw.com
“Recycle, Restore, and Reuse Environmentally Impacted Properties: Rebuild Your Community One Brownfield at a Time”