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Law Provides Liability Relief to CA Brownfield Site Purchasers
By: Dan Johnson
As the Southern California real estate market continues to grow, the number of available sites is shrinking. With demand remaining high, new avenues of development are being found. One solution is the redevelopment of Brownfields sites, areas of land previously contaminated by waste or other use. In the past, such redevelopment has been seriously impeded by liability requirements under California's environmental laws.
Now, with Assembly Bill 389, entitled "California Land Reuse and Revitalization Act of 2004" (the Act), liability relief is provided to both purchasers of contaminated properties and owners of properties adjoining contaminated sites. Signed into law on September 23, 2004, the bill extends the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) liability protections under the 2002 federal "Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act" to those who purchase California brownfields sites.
Previously, the current property owner or a potential buyer could be held financially responsible for the cleanup process if contamination was found, even if that party had no part in the damage. Until this new Act was passed, there was no appropriate modification to close the liability gap between federal and California law.
The Act will change California law by altering the Health & Safety Code to provide an innocent landowner, a prospective purchaser, or an adjacent property owner with liability relief. This allows any of these parties to avoid responsibility for costs or damage claims for contamination on, under, or adjacent to the property in question if the party performs environmental assessment and remedial actions under regulatory supervision. If the parties involved perform the required assessments, the Act also provides protection from later legal action or requirements by a regulatory agency of any kind. While this doesn't provide an easy way out, it is a step in the direction of accurate liability assessment.
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EPA Requesting Proposals for Job Training Grants
The EPA Office of Brownfields Cleanup and Redevelopment is requesting proposals for brownfields job training grants. This is a competitive grant program managed in accordance with EPA Order 5700.5 Policy for Competition in Assistance Agreements, conducted under a ranking system established under the Brownfields Law (P.L. 107-118). The goals of the Job Training Program are to prepare trainees for future employment in the environmental field and facilitate cleanup of brownfield sites contaminated with hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants and petroleum.
Eligible applicants include: State governments, county governments, city or township governments, nonprofit organizations having a 501(c)(3) with the IRS other than institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments, public and state controlled institutions of higher education, and special district governments.
Proposals are due September 16, 2005 to:
Attn: Mr. Don West
Environmental Management Support, Inc.
8601 Georgia Avenue, Suite 500
Silver Spring, MD 20910
For further information on the brownfields job training grant, please contact:
Joe Bruss (202) 566-2772 or e-mail questions to bruss.joseph@epa.com
Proposal guidelines are available at: http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/applicat.htm#jt
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El Cajon (CA) Redevelopment Agency Awarded Brownfields Grant
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently awarded a $200,000 brownfields grant to the El Cajon (CA) Redevelopment Agency. The City of El Cajon will use the grant to create a geographic database of all potential brownfield sites, thus cataloguing the number of potentially contaminated properties in the city's central business district. Working together with El Cajon Community Development Corporation (CDC), Environmental Business Solutions assisted CDC with grant writing and soliciting community support for the project. City officials are hoping the completed database will encourage potential developers to redevelop these areas with new housing and businesses.
The El Cajon central business district, centered around 168 East Main St. and the adjacent area extending north from the downtown center along Magnolia St. to the Interstate 8 Freeway, is slated for mixed-use commercial and residential development.
"Funding for brownfields projects will allow communities to revitalize properties that have been sitting idle due to real or even perceived contamination," said Wayne Nastri, regional administrator of the EPA's Pacific Southwest office. "The program yields positive results by bringing new life to the under-used properties in many cities and towns."
The Brownfields Program promotes redevelopment of America's estimated 450,000 abandoned and contaminated waste sites. Since its inception in 1995, the program has awarded 709 assessment grants totaling more than $190 million, 189 revolving loan fund grants worth more than $165 million, and $26.8 million for 150 cleanup grants.
In addition to facilitating industrial and commercial redevelopment, brownfields projects have converted industrial waterfronts to riverfront parks, landfills to golf courses, rail corridors to recreational trails, and gas station sites to housing. The program has led to more than $7 billion in public and private investment in cleanup and redevelopment, helped create more than 31,000 jobs, and resulted in the assessment of more than 5,100 properties.
To learn more about this project, contact Bonnie Kutch or Stacy Keck at 619-299-1010 or at info@kutchco.com .
For more information about brownfields funding, visit http://www.epa.gov/brownfields . Back to Table of Contents
Urban Redevelopment Case Studies Examined
While America's very largest cities have been enjoying strong economic growth and new housing construction, many other older cities are experiencing continued job loss, population decline, and property abandonment. Although this ''second tier'' of America's cities employs a range of economic development strategies, some have been particularly successful in sponsoring catalytic development projects with housing that have transformed urban areas once known for run-down buildings and high crime rates.
Economic Development Case Studies from the National Association of REALTORS® examines seven redevelopment projects from across the country that have served as catalytic projects for urban revitalization in their communities. The projects examined in these case studies have transformed urban areas once known for high crime rates, underutilized and run-down buildings, and industrial warehouses. All the projects could now be classified as bellwether developments in their respective neighborhoods as each has revitalized the community in which it is situated.
Economic Development Case Studies is available online as a .pdf document at http://www.realtor.org/SG3.nsf/files/EconDevelopCaseStudies.pdf/$FILE/EconDevelopCaseStudies.pdf
Reprinted from Smart Growth Resource Library at http://www.smartgrowth.org/library/articles.asp?art=1708 Back to Table of Contents
Successful Redevelopments in Hammond, IN
Reprinted from IDEM Office of Land Quality publication, Brownfields Bulletin
Imagine a place that was once an open dumping ground that is now home to three separate businesses employing approximately 150 people. Residents in the city of Hammond, IN don't have to imagine it –they can see it with their own eyes, and the process of revitalizing an underutilized industrial area in their community is still going strong. Another step in the journey took place recently when the Hammond Urban Enterprise Association (HUEA) received a Certificate of Completion for the Myers property in north Hammond. The certificate, issued by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's (IDEM) Voluntary Remediation Program (VRP), helps clear the way for expansion of one of the existing businesses–a development that may yield nearly 100 additional jobs.
The 46-acre Myers property is one of three adjoining sites that have been, or are currently being addressed, in the VRP. Another, the West Point Industrial Park property, which was one of the first sites to receive assessment assistance from the Brownfields Program, has already completed the VRP process, and work on the third, Industrial Fuels and Asphalt property (IFA) is ongoing. All three properties are situated within a quarter mile of Interstate 90, just 25 minutes away from downtown Chicago. Their location made the sites potentially attractive to businesses that need ready access to highways and major markets. However, several factors, including lack of infrastructure and concerns about environmental liability, hindered reuse of the sites.
For example, though neither the Myers nor the West Point Industrial Park properties were formally developed, both were subject to unauthorized dumping of materials such as tires, household trash, roofing shingles, and construction debris. In addition, the Myers property received significant amounts of steel mill slag during the early and middle parts of the last century. Finally, the IFA property was the site of a petroleum refinery and asphalt production facility until it was abandoned in the late 1980s. These sites were unproductive and underutilized and became eyesores in the community.
That's when the HUEA got involved. The organization developed a vision for the three properties as an industrial park and enrolled all three sites into the VRP.
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