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Café Built on Former Brownfields Site Emphasizes Community and Ability
By Carol Blanchard, Special Projects Coordinator, City of Westwego, LA
A former funeral parlor and contaminated industrial equipment storage site is now a beautiful training facility for mentally and physically challenged adults. The Vintage Garden Café, located in the Historic Salaville area of Westwego, LA, is a flourishing neighborhood restaurant that serves a delicious and varied menu to its clientele while providing work-training opportunities to twenty adults with severe developmental disabilities.
This 1-acre brownfields site located on Sala Avenue in Westwego, was a funeral home between 1949 and 1979 and an industrial equipment storage site until June 2000. In partnership with the State of Louisiana, the Jefferson Parish Human Services Authority, a grassroots Westbank parent group, and The ARC of Greater New Orleans, the City of Westwego purchased the property with its own funds and agreed to perform a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (ESA) utilizing city funds. The primary source of cleanup and redevelopment funds, totaling $500,000, was an allocation from the state's capital outlay budget.
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Pilot Programme Will Tackle England's Brownfield Legacy
A pilot programme aimed at solving England's legacy of long-term derelict land has been launched in 12 local authority areas. The initiative is being jointly led by national regeneration agency, English Partnerships and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) as part of a wider national strategy that aims to bring England's 164,000 acres of brownfield land back into beneficial use.
Research carried out by English Partnerships identified more than 2,000 long-term or ‘hardcore' sites nationally that have lain vacant or derelict since at least 1993. Most of the sites are in the north of England with an average size in excess of 20 acres. These sites, totaling around 42,000 acres, have failed to be regenerated due to a series of problems including contamination, market failure, cost, and planning difficulties.
A further 4,500 sites, with a total area in excess of 21,000 acres, are suffering from medium-term dereliction, having been vacant or derelict for at least five years. Although largely concentrated in the northern regions, there are also significant concentrations of these sites in the southeast.
Launching the pilot programme, Keith Hill, Minister of State for Housing and Planning says, “This is the ultimate recycling policy – recycling land will help protect the countryside and enhance its quality rather than creating urban sprawl. It is a cornerstone of our plans to deliver sustainable communities and will provide, for the first time, a coherent vision for the future development of brownfield land.”
The 12 pilot areas are Easington, Barrow-in-Furness, Manchester, Sheffield, Mansfield, Dudley, Milton Keynes, Ipswich, Tower Hamlets, Barking & Dagenham, Bristol and Kerrier (Cornwall). As a result of the programme it is hoped that at least one hardcore site in each area will be developed either for commercial or recreational use, with funding being acquired through private sector investment.
A short-list of long and medium-term derelict sites will be identified in each area and practical studies undertaken to assess the barriers to employment or housing development or to returning the land to recreational or natural use. In each case work will be led by a ‘local brownfield partnership', that will include representatives from English Partnerships, the local authority, RDAs (Regional Development Agencies), development industry, local business, and community groups.
The 12 pilots were selected because they provided a mix of urban and rural examples with a varied history and reasons for dereliction. They also include authorities with different urban initiatives already in place such as URCs, enterprise zones, housing market renewal pathfinders or are within a growth area.
Professor Paul Syms, National Brownfield Strategy Director for English Partnerships, who is leading the joint initiative with ODPM, adds, “We have a very good idea about how land has become derelict and why it is not being re-used, but the pilot programme will actually tease out the real practicalities of bringing these long-term, hardcore sites, back into beneficial use. While there will be common themes, the spread of pilot areas means that we will be able to assess the impact of local influences and come up with solutions to a wide variety of development barriers.”
Although English Partnerships has some funding available for the pilots, a key objective of the programme will be to gauge the level and type of public sector intervention that may be required to deal with the large-scale problem. As well as determining development barriers and solutions, the pilot projects will help reveal which local brownfield partnership model(s) operate most effectively and generate input from local communities most successfully.
Work will be begin in each pilot area over the next two months and the findings fed into the National Brownfield Strategy document that is expected to be published in early 2006. A series of regional workshops are scheduled to begin this week aimed at engaging development and regeneration professionals from both the private and public sectors in reviewing the problems of brownfield land and in contributing practical help in the pilot areas.
Reprinted from http://www.a2mediagroup.com/?c=123&a=2289&sid=0817a431208e31041b10fe1963ca2d93
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Call for Entries - 2005 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pleased to announce that applications are now being accepted for the fourth annual National Award for Smart Growth Achievement. This competition is open to local or state governments and other public sector entities that have used the principles of smart growth to create better places.
Smart growth development serves the economy, the community, and the environment. Smart growth approaches to development create clear environmental benefits, including improved air and water quality, preservation of critical habitat and open space, and more cleanup and re-use of brownfield sites.
This year, applications will be accepted in five categories:
- Built Projects
- Policies and Regulations
- Small Communities
- Military Base Redevelopment
- Overall Excellence in Smart Growth
Interested parties are encouraged to submit applications for smart growth activities that have shown significant activity between May 19, 2000, and May 18, 2005. Successful applicants will have incorporated the principles of smart growth to create places that respect community culture and the environment, foster economic development, and enhance quality of life and public health.
Applications are due on May 18, 2005. Up to five winners will be recognized at a ceremony in Washington, DC, in November 2005.
For more details about the National Award for Smart Growth Achievement, including an application packet, visit: http://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/awards.htm
For more information on the US EPA Brownfields Program visit: http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/
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New Grant Program Helps Communities
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is launching a new grant program to help communities understand and reduce the risk of exposure to toxic chemicals. Through Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE), EPA is offering communities financial and technical assistance to reduce releases of toxic pollutants and minimize exposure to them.
Communities will be empowered to create local collaborative partnerships to identify sources of toxic exposure and set priorities for risk reduction. Communities also will have access to tools from EPA's voluntary programs that focus on reducing exposure to toxic pollutants, such as programs that reduce emissions from diesel engines, clean abandoned industrial sites, improve the indoor environment in schools, and use pollution prevention to protect drinking water supplies.
CARE will offer funding at two levels. Under Level I, communities will receive approximately $75,000 to establish collaborative partnerships for reducing toxic releases in their environment. Level II offers approximately $300,000 to communities that already have a broad-based collaborative partnership and are ready to implement risk reduction strategies. Applications are due May 20, 2005.
For more information visit: http://www.epa.gov/air/grants/05-08.pdf
For more information on the US EPA's Brownfields Program visit: http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/
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State Must Gauge Pollution in Minority Areas
By Katherine Bouma, Birmingham News Staff Writer
A state senate committee
(Alabama) unanimously passed a bill recently that would
require the state to measure pollution affecting minority populations before considering permits for industries.
The bill, approved 5-0 by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is one of three "environmental justice" proposals that were introduced in the Legislature this session. Supporters lauded the passage as a step forward in the effort to ensure that poor and minority populations get equal protection from industries' pollution.
"There's a position taken by some of us that environmental issues like dumping toxic wastes on poor and black communities are going on unchecked and unmonitored," said House sponsor Rep. Joseph Mitchell, D-Mobile. "There's an encroaching danger to quality of life in these communities. Dumps are rarely in upper-class communities."
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