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Background
Section 101 of the Comprehensive
Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) defines
brownfields sites as "real property, the expansion, redevelopment,
or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence
of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established its Brownfields
Economic Revitalization Initiative to empower states, communities, and
other stakeholders in economic revitalization to work together to accomplish
the redevelopment of brownfields sites. With the enactment of the Small
Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act in 2002,
EPA assistance was expanded to provide greater support for brownfields
cleanup and reuse. Many states and local jurisdictions also help businesses
and communities adapt environmental cleanup programs to the special needs
of brownfields sites.
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Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act
Since its inception in 1995, EPA’s Brownfields Program has grown into
a proven, result-oriented initiative that has changed the way contaminated
property is perceived, addressed, and managed. Through passage of the
Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act (Public
Law 107-118; H.R. 2869) in January 2002, effective policies that EPA had
developed over the years were passed into law. The Brownfields Law expanded
EPA’s assistance by providing new tools that the public and private sectors
could use to promote sustainable brownfields cleanup and reuse.
The law modified EPA’s existing brownfields grants and technical assistance
program by:
- Increasing the funding authority up to $200 million per year
- Providing grants for assessments, revolving loan funds, direct cleanups,
and job training
- Expanding the entities, properties, and activities eligible for brownfields
grants
- Expanding the Brownfields Program’s applicability to sites with petroleum
contamination such as abandoned gasoline stations
- Providing authority for brownfields training, research, and technical
assistance
- Allowing up to 10 percent of the grant funds to be used to monitor
the health of exposed populations and enforce any instutional controls
Brownfields grants continue to serve as the foundation of EPA’s Brownfields
Program by funding environmental assessment, cleanup, and job training
activities.
Brownfields Assessment Grants provide funding for brownfields inventories,
planning, environmental assessments, and community outreach. Brownfields
Revolving Loan Fund Grants provide funding to capitalize loans that are
used to clean up brownfields sites. Brownfields Job Training Grants provide
environmental training for residents of brownfields communities. Brownfields
Cleanup Grants provide direct funding for cleanup activities at certain
properties with planned green space, recreational, or other nonprofit
uses.
The law changed and clarified Superfund liability:
- Clarified Superfund liability for prospective purchasers, innocent
landowners, and contiguous property owners
- Provided liability protection for certain small-volume waste contributors
and contributors of municipal solid waste
The law created a strong, balanced relationship between the federal government
and state and tribal programs:
- Authorized up to $50 million per year for building and enhancing state
and tribal response programs and expanded the activities eligible for
funding
- Provided protection from Superfund liability at sites cleaned up under
a state program
- Preserved the federal safety net by detailing the circumstances in
which EPA can revisit a cleanup
- Clarified the state role in adding sites to the Superfund National
Priorities List (NPL)
EPA’s investment in the Brownfields Program has resulted in many accomplishments,
and the momentum generated by the program is leaving an enduring legacy.
EPA’s Brownfields Program continues to look to the future by expanding
the types of properties it addresses, forming new partnerships, and undertaking
new initiatives to help revitalize communities across the nation. Additional
information on the Brownfields Law is available at www.epa.gov/brownfields/sblrbra.htm.
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Preparing brownfields sites for productive reuse requires integration
of many elements - financial issues, community involvement, liability
considerations, environmental assessment and cleanup, regulatory requirements,
and more - as well as coordination among many groups of stakeholders.
The assessment and cleanup of a site must be carried out in a way that
integrates all these factors into the overall redevelopment process. In
addition, the cleanup strategy will vary from site to site. At some sites,
cleanup will be completed before the properties are transferred to new
owners. At other sites, cleanup may take place simultaneously with construction
and redevelopment activities.
Regardless of when and how cleanups are accomplished, the challenge
to any brownfields program is to clean up sites in accordance with
redevelopment goals. Such goals may include cost-effectiveness,
timeliness, avoidance of adverse effects to site structures and
neighboring communities, and redevelopment of land in a way that
benefits communities and local economies.
Regulators and site managers are increasingly recognizing the value
of implementing a more dynamic approach to streamline assessment
and cleanup activities at brownfields sites. This approach, referred
to as the Triad, is flexible and recognizes site-specific decisions
and data needs.
The Triad approach focuses on management of decision uncertainty
by incorporating (1) systematic project planning; (2) dynamic work
planning strategies; and (3) use of real-time measurement technologies,
including innovative technologies, to accelerate and improve the
cleanup process. The Triad approach can reduce costs, improve decision
certainty, expedite site closeout, and positively affect regulatory
and community acceptance. This approach is well aligned with brownfields
site priorities, which are affected by the economics of redevelopment,
community involvement, and liability considerations.
Numerous technology options are available to assist those involved in
brownfields cleanup. EPA's Office
of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation (OSRTI) encourages
use of smarter solutions for characterizing and cleaning up contaminated
sites by advocating more effective, less costly technological approaches.
Use of innovative technologies to characterize and clean up brownfields
sites provides opportunities for stakeholders to reduce cleanup costs
and accelerate cleanup schedules. Often, innovative approaches are also
more acceptable to communities.
| An emerging technology is an innovative technology that is
currently undergoing bench-scale testing in which a small version
of the technology is tested in a laboratory. |
| An innovative technology is a technology that has been field-tested
and applied to a hazardous waste problem at a site but that
lacks a long history of full-scale use. Information about its
cost and how well it works may be insufficient to support prediction
of its performance under a wide variety of operating conditions. |
| An established technology is a technology for which cost and
performance information is readily available. Only after a technology
has been used at many different sites and the results have been
fully documented is that technology considered to be established. |
EPA defines an innovative technology as one that has been used in the
field but that does not yet have a long history of full-scale use. In
addition, data about the cost and performance of innovative technologies
may not be sufficient to encourage decision-makers to select those technologies
over established technologies. A primary area of interest to EPA is documenting
and disseminating information about the cost and performance of innovative
technologies. EPA, through its work with the Federal
Remediation Technologies Roundtable (FRTR), has seen significant progress
in this area. Innovative technologies are being used in many cleanup programs
to assess contamination and to clean up sites.
Comprehensive information about the range of innovative technologies
and their use as well as technical expertise pertinent to them, is available
from EPA's Brownfields and Land
Revitalization Technology Support Center (BTSC). The BTSC is coordinated
through OSRTI and is supported by EPA's Office
of Research and Development (ORD). The center works closely with EPA'
s Office of Brownfields Cleanup
and Redevelopment and in partnership with the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and Argonne
National Laboratory (ANL). Established in 1999 as a pilot program,
the BTSC assists brownfields decision-makers by presenting strategies
for streamlining site assessment and cleanup, identifying information
about technology options, evaluating plans and documents, describing complex
technologies for communities, and providing demonstration support.
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