Sustainable Brownfield Development

Building a Sustainable Future on Sites of our Polluting Past

Christopher De Sousa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000401486
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

While industrial and chemical innovations have contributed extensively to human advancement, the darker part of their legacy has been the hundreds of thousands of polluted sites left behind. Governments at all levels have rallied to support the remediation and reuse of these land resources and put many of the nation's brownfields back into productive use. This book presents two dozen brownfield projects in the United States that have incorporated sustainability, highlighting project features, best management practices, and lessons from the field regarding the underlying policies and practices that enabled these projects to be completed or, in some cases, stalled, altered or abandoned.

The case studies represent an array of brownfield projects that aimed to go beyond conventional practice and include a range and variety of end uses (e.g., corner gas stations, industrial, office, residential, brightfields, green space, mixed-use, and transit-oriented developments). The cases investigate site histories, planning and development and examine sustainability characteristics to understand how projects overcame the barriers to brownfield reuse and the implementation of sustainability features and derive a series of lessons learned, including innovative policies, programs, and/or funding mechanisms that helped make these projects work.

Sustainable Brownfield Development will be of interest to developers, planners, consultants and community representatives interested in environmental policy, urban planning, community development, ecological restoration, economic development, and parks planning by providing direction and inspiration for those eager to erase the blight of the past and build a more sustainable future.

1 Brownfields Background

Introduction

The tragedy at Love Canal raised national awareness and concern about the impact that pollution was having on our health and the natural environment. Warnings from scientists like Rachel Carson in her seminal book Silent Spring suddenly seemed to be playing out, as families and children wondered if the chemicals that lurked beneath their homes, schools, and neighborhoods were making them sick. A combination of media attention and intense community activism led President Jimmy Carter to announce a federal health emergency on August 7, 1978; the first time emergency funds were granted for a non-natural disaster. Congress also passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) in 1980. Better known as Superfund, it put a tax on chemical and petroleum industries and allowed the federal government to respond directly to releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances that might endanger public health and the environment.

While the response was too slow for some, the uncertainty was too much for others. As scientists and regulators worked to understand the science of contamination better, the number of known and potentially contaminated sites across the country kept piling up into the hundreds of thousands as deindustrialization fed the inventory. Purchasers and developers seemed content to secure a cleaner and greener future in America’s suburbs, leaving tainted sites to idle and rust.

Mayors of the proud American cities that built the country grew impatient, however, and pushed for reform. In response, the federal government in the early 1990s began to shift from being enforcement-driven regulators of risk post-Love Canal to facilitators of remediation, reuse, and redevelopment. Most potentially contaminated sites were re-labeled as brownfields, and policies, programs, and procedures were developed and tested to get people and markets to change their perception of these sites from liabilities to opportunities and help the phoenix rise from the ashes. Cleaning and reusing land, removing blight, and getting the urban real estate market back on track was also seen as the more responsible and sustainable thing to do compared with the rampant auto-dependent sprawl gobbling up the countryside. But some were not satisfied with building the same-old conventional projects on brownfields. Instead of sustainability by default, they felt that brownfield projects should be sustainable by design, incorporating best-practices in environmental, social, and economic sustainability to give rise to a smarter and more resilient phoenix.

This book tells the stories of two dozen brownfield projects throughout the United States that sought to raise the bar and lay the foundation for sustainable brownfield development. It highlights project features, Best Management Practices (BMPs), and lessons from the field regarding the underlying policies, practices, and people that enabled many projects to succeed and, in some cases, be stalled, altered or abandoned. Ten of these case studies are considered early and trendsetting BMPs in the brownfields arena. The others are pilot projects that were allocated funding by the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) in their early stages to incorporate sustainability as part of a Sustainable Brownfields Pilot program launched in 2008. The book is based on research funded by the US EPA from 2009 to 2013, along with updates carried out between 2017 to the present. The added time made it possible to track the progress of both the pilots and the BMPs, allowing for a longer-term retrospective to see if the seeds planted at the pilots took hold and to assess the impact of these sustainable projects on the community and development sector.

The primary aim of the book is to present an array of detailed case studies of brownfield projects that aspired to go beyond conventional and become “sustainable,” as well as to draw insights from the whole sample of cases. The research was conducted via structured interviews with project coordinators, while BMPs also involved interviews with multiple stakeholders, including developers, planners, consultants, and community representatives. The in-depth case studies examine site histories, sustainability characteristics and describe how projects overcame the barriers to both brownfield reuse and the implementation of sustainability features. Lessons learned regarding what helped make these projects work, as well as project impacts, are also discussed.

The book is divided into 11 chapters. The first chapter introduces the reader to the brownfield issue, including the definition, scope of the problem, the evolution of policy, planning, and management in the US, and an overview of the development process from site assessment to development. The second chapter reviews policy and practitioner efforts, as well as scholarly literature, linking brownfields and sustainability in the US and abroad. The aim is to provide the reader with a sense of the historical evolution of this effort, including research on both the sustainability impacts of brownfields redevelopment and efforts to make brownfields redevelopment more sustainable.

In Chapters 3 to 10, case studies are organized by end-use (i.e., corner gas stations, industrial, office, residential, brightfields, community and green space, mixed-use, and transit-oriented developments). Each case study is examined in-depth (i.e., site history, project vision, project characteristics, and development) and includes a discussion of benefits, barriers, lessons learned, and a timeline. The final chapter synthesizes lessons learned from the whole sample of case studies and discusses ways to advance sustainable brownfield development in the US and abroad.

Brownfields 101

Definition and Scope

Efforts to manage contaminated sites in the United States have evolved considerably since Love Canal spurred policy-makers into action in the late 1970s. Given the serious concern regarding the impact of chemicals on human health and the environment, initial management efforts aimed to identify and repair sites with known contamination problems, as well as those suspected of being contaminated based on their prior use. The first step that regulators had to take, therefore, was to understand better the risks posed by contaminants, identify the sources of contamination, and figure out how to manage them.

A contaminant is defined broadly as any physical, chemical, biological, or radiological substance found in our air, water, or soil. While we can handle small amounts of some contaminants, they may pose a risk if we are exposed to them at certain levels for too long. A critical scientific step, therefore, was to gain a better understanding of which contaminants were harmful and at what level of exposure. This proved to be a formidable task given the sheer quantity and variety of chemicals produced since the late 19th century to make the products that support our daily lives, ranging from pesticides for agriculture to petrochemicals for transportation. Today, detailed lists have been generated with toxicity information for hundreds of contaminants of concern.

While knowledge of contaminants is vital, even more important for assessing and managing risk is knowing how we come into contact with them, often referred to as exposure pathways. People can be exposed to a wide range of contaminants through ingestion of polluted soil (directly or even indirectly through food produced on contaminated properties), inhalation of airborne particulates from soil or abandoned chemicals, and direct skin contact with contaminated soil, water, or airborne particles. Knowledge of both contaminants and exposure allows for the assessment of risk to human health, including cancer and non-cancer hazards such as respiratory, neurological, reproductive effects. While risk varies for every property and land-use scenario (and can be calculated accordingly), screening tables posted by environmental agencies allow risk assessors to determine whether the level of contamination found at a site warrants further investigation or cleanup based on certain “generic” assumptions of how the land is going to be used (e.g., homes or parks versus industrial and commercial properties). The US EPA also provides guidance on assessing ecological risks to plants and animals in the environment that may be affected by exposure to one or more environmental stressors, including chemicals, land-use change, disease, invasive species, and climate change.

Better knowledge of risk and exposure allowed for the identification of “known” contaminated sites, which by definition have soil, groundwater, or surface water with contaminant levels exceeding those considered safe by regulators. The distinction is often made between known contaminated sites that have undergone testing and potentially contaminated sites suspected of being polluted based on their former use (i.e., waste disposal, manufacturing, military, petroleum-based activities, former dry cleaners, etc.). The term brownfields became widely adopted in the early 1990s to address the negative connotations associated with the label potentially contaminated, even though the definition remained similar (Bartsch, 1996). That is, abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial and commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination. In their seminal work, Noonan and Vidich (1992, p. 248) provide a table listing different types of properties and their probability of being contaminated based on their former land use. For instance, vacant rural land and residential property have a low likelihood of contamination (20 percent). In comparison, uses such as former coal-gas plants (99 percent), metal-plating plants (90 percent), landfills (90 percent), vehicle-maintenance facilities (82 percent), gas stations (88 percent), dry cleaners (74 percent), and urban vacant/abandoned land (85 percent) have a much higher probability of contamination.

In terms of the number of brownfields in the United States, there is no national inventory that allows for accurate accounting. The US EPA (n.d.a) estimates that there are more than 450,000 brownfields across the country, while other estimates put the number at 500,000 to 600,000 or more (Simons, 1998a, 1998b). The most severe sites containing hazardous materials deemed to pose the highest risk to human health and the environment are put on a National Priorities List (NPL) upon completion of a Hazard Ranking System (HRS) screening. As of August 2020, there were 1,335 active NPL sites, according to the US EPA, along with another 51 proposed NPL sites (424 have been deleted). The EPA also maintained information on hazardous-waste site assessment and remediation from 1983 onward via the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Information System (CERCLIS), but this has recently been replaced by the Superfund Enterprise Management System (SEMS).

Many state and city governments also maintain brownfield inventories, although there is no standardized approach for identifying the sites to be included or the information maintained. Information on potentially hazardous sites is typically drawn from an array of data sources related to waste management and storage, spills, and existing industrial facilities that manage hazardous materials. States also maintain inventories of brownfield projects that have gone through their cleanup programs. These typically contain information related to site ownership, location, assessment, remediation, institutional controls, and other land-use limitations or conditions put in place following cleanup.

One of the most widely referenced sources of information regarding the number of urban brownfields in the country is the brownfields surveys administered to local governments by the US Conference of Mayors since the mid-1990s. In 2008, for example, 188 of the responding cities estimated that they had more than 24,896 brownfields with an average site size of approximately 14 acres (US Conference of Mayors, 2008, p. 9). One hundred and seventy-six cities had an estimated 83,949 acres of idle or abandoned land, and 150 of those also estimated that 3,282 sites were ‘mothballed’, meaning the current owner had no intention of redeveloping or selling due to environmental impact concerns.

Motivating Factors: Why Brownfields?

While the fear associated with health and environmental risk sparked federal and state government efforts to manage contamination, it also stunted investment in potentially contaminated property throughout much of the 1980s. This contributed to public welfare issues tied to blight that are of particular concern to local governments, such as poor aesthetics, nuisance, odors, and declining property values. As such, municipal goals associated with brownfields redevelopment prioritize neighborhood revitalization, increasing the city’s tax base and job creation, followed by environmental protection (US Conference of Mayors, 2010, p. 10). Also, public-sector officials at all levels of government emphasize blight elimination, liability reduction, environmental justice, business retention, reuse of existing infrastructure, enhanced property values, improved health, and the catalytic effect that brownfield projects often trigger.

The decision by the private sector to invest in brownfield development is typically motivated by economic factors, such as landowners divesting liability risks/costs and developers taking advantage of reduced brownfields property prices in up-and-coming property markets to maximize their return on investment. Interviews conducted with private-sector stakeholders in Milwaukee, WI, and Chicago, IL, indicate that the factors attracting them to brownfields for housing development, for example, also relate to location and surrounding amenities (De Sousa, 2008, p. 215). Developers and landowners are also motivated by environmental issues that can affect their bottom line, such as the need to conform to environmental regulations and to protect the health and safety of those utilizing their projects and residing in surrounding communities.

More and more, community development organizations and non-profits are interested in working on brownfields in communities with weaker real estate markets. Community-based non-profits typically seek to rebuild low-income neighborhoods for the benefit of local residents and tend to be more concerned with the social implications of development projects and how such projects contribute to affordable housing, neighborhood stabilization, and improving quality of life (Dewar & Deitrick 2004, p. 159). These organizations are flexible and can play multiple roles in brownfields redevelopment, including education, outreach, facilitation, and advocacy.

Overall, stakeholders have become increasingly involved in brownfields to achieve a much broader set of environmental, social, and economic outcomes, which one could argue might be better served by building sustainably instead of conventionally.

Overcoming the Barriers to Brownfields Redevelopment

Despite the many desirable environmental, economic, and social goals associated with the cleanup and reuse of brownfields, redevelopment has been hampered by a series of risks and challenges that impose real costs and risks to all interested parties. All levels of government in the US have spent decades working to overcome these barriers, the most critical of which include regulation and uncertainty regarding who is liable for addressing contamination, the process governing the assessment and remediation of sites, access to funding and financing to undertake cleanup and redevelopment, and spurring reuse in areas with weak demand for real estate. What follows aims to provide readers with a sense of the evolution of policy efforts to overcome these barriers thus far.

The Evolving Regulatory Landscape

Concern over hazardous materials and the disposal of toxic waste began to grow in the 1950s and 1960s as more and more scientific research, including Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, sounded alarms about chemicals used in agriculture and for other purposes. The US EPA, which was formed in December 1970, allowed the federal government to play a leading role in hazardous waste management and to work with state governments and other stakeholders to gather more information regarding the chemistry, transport, and disposal of hazardous material. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) enacted in 1976 established federal authority for controls over hazardous and other waste from generation to disposal (cradle to grave). Congress also passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in that same year to provide the EPA with the authority to protect public health and the environment through controls on toxic chemicals that pose an unreasonable risk of injury (US EPA, n.d.b).

Well-publicized disasters, including Love Canal and a fire at a sizeable chemical-waste treatment facility in Bridgeport, New Jersey that left six dead and 35 in hospital in 1977, intensified public awareness and led to CERCLA (Superfund) passed by Congress in 1980 (Public Law 96-510, HR 7020, SEC 104(a)(1)). Superfund gave the EPA and other federal agencies the regulatory authority to respond to a release, or threat of a release, of a hazardous substance or “any pollutant or contaminant which may present an immediate and substantial danger to public health or welfare.” The legislation enabled the federal government to recover the costs of cleanup actions from responsible parties or to clean up sites at their own expense. The EPA also published a numerically based Hazard Ranking System in 1981 for evaluating environmental hazards at sites and used the system to generate the first National Priorities List identifying 406 sites as the nation’s top priorities for cleanup under Superfund. In 1986, the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) was passed by Congress to strengthen CERCLA’s enforcement provisions, encourage voluntary settlements instea...