[CPEO-BIF] "On Greenfields And Brownfields, " Chattanooga, Tennessee

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

On Greenfields And Brownfields

by Sandy Kurtz
Chattanooga Pulse (TN)
July 12, 2017

Are you truly safe from Chattanooga’s contaminated land?

For safe development purposes, land has been divided into two categories: greenfields and brownfields. You likely sense that a greenfield would be a farm or a place where no business or manufacturer has ever polluted. By process of elimination then, a brownfield could be everything else except waterways and wetlands. 

Say you’re a developer and you would like to build, reuse, or renovate an apartment building downtown. You need a design and a city permit that meets zoning requirements. However, you can’t get a permit until you show that your site is in a suitable environmental condition for your plan even if there is already a building on it. 

The city and state want you, the developer, to show that no pollutants will harm anyone choosing to live in that building. In other words, before buying in, ask, “Is this site now or has it ever been a brownfield?” 

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.chattanoogapulse.com/columns/shades-of-green/on-greenfields-and-brownfields/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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