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| Brownfields Weekly |
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May 31, 2001 IN THIS ISSUE:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brownfields Weekly welcomes your press releases and story ideas. If you
have a story of interest to the community-at-large, write to the editors: Get listed on our Industry Links page! Send your link to the editors. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- House Passes Bill to Reform Superfund
Liability Washington, DC (ENS) - The House of Representatives passed legislation last week that would offer exemptions to small businesses and towns from federal requirements to pay for pollution at Superfund sites. The Small Business Liability Protection Act (HR 1831) passed in the House on a 419 to 0 vote. The current Superfund law includes the concept of "joint and several liability," meaning that every polluter who contributed at all to the contamination of a Superfund site is financially liable for its cleanup. Many large polluters have used that concept in court to spread cleanup costs out to smaller businesses. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christie Whitman praised the bipartisan sponsors of the bill. "We have been encouraging Congress to enact legislation to assist EPA in providing relief to small businesses who were unfairly dragged into Superfund sites. This measure will promote cleanup and reduce needless lawsuits by drawing a bright line between large contributors of toxic waste and small businesses that disposed of small amounts of waste or ordinary trash," explained Whitman. "The less litigation we have, the more likely we finish the job of cleaning up Superfund sites," said Whitman. "This legislation will reduce the time spent in court and increase the time spent cleaning the environment." Representative John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican who cosponsored the bill, noted that, "At the urging of overzealous attorneys, courts have expanded Superfund liability so far that someone can be held liable for cleaning up a site even if they sent a quart of oil, ordinary household garbage, or even a single copper penny." "Superfund cleanups are a very complex issue. But if there's one thing we all should be able to agree on, it's about liability relief for small businesses that send miniscule amounts of waste or ordinary garbage to a Superfund site," said Alaska Representative Don Young, a Republican. "Congress never intended that these parties be subject to Superfund liability and this bill applies some common sense to the issue." Whitman to Give Keynote Address at Brownfields
Summit - June 18 Washington, DC - EPA Administrator Christie Whitman has been confirmed as the keynote speaker at the U.S. Chamber's Brownfields Summit, to be held at the St. Regis Hotel on June 18, 2001. Other confirmed guests include Senator Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI), sponsor of Senate Bill S.350, Charles Bartsch, Director of the Northeast Midwest Institute's Brownfields Financing Studies, and Dennis Alvord from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration. The Summit will focus on efforts to enact and implement national Brownfields legislation. Other events at the Summit will be "Let’s Make A Deal," bringing together local governments, developers, the financial community, and government agencies to broker Brownfields redevelopment deals. National brownfields legislation is key to removing government red tape, reforming liability barriers, streamlining cleanups at sites with little or no contamination, and providing funding for site investigation and remediation. The Brownfields Summit will support efforts by Congress and the Bush Administration to enact Brownfields legislation. For the complete Brownfields Summit agenda, visit: To register for the Brownfields Summit online via secure server, visit: 2001 International Containment &
Remediation Technology Conference Organized by Florida State University's Institute for International Cooperative Environmental Research (IICER), the 2001 International Containment & Remediation Technology Conference and Exhibition is being held to advance the deployment of innovative technologies, and to showcase many R&D efforts for developing technologies by:
The conference will also focus on new research and development efforts related to remediation and containment for organics, metals and radionuclides. For more information and to register for the Conference, visit: Oklahoma Town Turns Old Recycling Plant
Into City Park The local Masonic Lodge in Headrick, Oklahoma purchased and donated to the city a small 7,500 square feet site, close to the local community center. Headrick City officials were eager to start converting this residential plot of land into a city park. But the project was soon halted with questions about the environmental conditions of the property. Local townspeople remembered that a former tenant had operated a small recycling business on the site. The business operated from 1985 through 1992, principally recovering metal components such as copper wire and ball bearings from various types of used equipment including electrical transformers and refrigeration units. Town trustees knew they would be unable to finance an environmental site assessment on the property. So they contacted Oklahoma State Senator Gilmer Capps and State Representative David Braddock for their help. Legislators referred the city to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) which then told the town trustees about the technical assistance that the EPA Brownfields Program could offer. The city of Headrick, with written support from ODEQ, contacted EPA to ask for technical assistance through the Brownfields Program. The EPA informed the city that it would be able to conduct a site assessment on the park property. Then EPA and its contractors collected soil samples to test for heavy metals associated with the recycling process. The site had a lot of debris on it, because the city had demolished two buildings as part of the effort to remediate the site. Results from the site assessment were shared with ODEQ, and the final report showed that the levels of metals found in the soil samples were below ODEQ standards and below EPA risk-based residential screening levels. Now that the property had a clean bill of health, the city removed the top layer of soil to get rid of any small debris (i.e. nuts and bolts) before laying gravel for the park. The Oklahoma Parks Department gave the city of Headrick an $8,000 grant to build its park. Headrick, Oklahoma is another example of how the EPA, state environmental agencies and local governments have worked together to put brownfields back into productive use. "Taking Back the Waterfront" in New York
City In the Spring 2001 issue of the Trust for Public Land's magazine, Land and People, Brooklyn, New York writer Martha Sutro's article "Taking Back the Waterfront" tells the story of Williamsburg citizens reclaiming Brooklyn's "hard-working waterfront for a new park." She writes, "After the old terminal closed in 1979, the buildings and lands lay empty. Nostalgic for their waterfront past, Williamsburg residents bribed each other for the old BEDT sign that used to grace the terminal building. In the 1980s, homeless encampments sprang up on the site, and fires burned the buildings to empty shells where the sky showed through. Lynn Bell took her camera down on sunny afternoons and photographed the rusted auto parts, roofless shanties, and a fellow artist's spontaneous industrial sculpture displays. But for people like Jan Ruszczyk, veteran Williamsburg resident, Polish immigrant, and liquor store owner, those were the bad old days. "We didn't go down there then," he says from his snug and popular store a few blocks from the water. "It was far too dangerous." Read "Taking Back the Waterfront" here: Visit the Trust for Public Land on the Web: |