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| Brownfields Weekly |
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June 28, 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greenlining Institute Urges Industry Support for SB.32 Sacramento, CA - An alliance of over 200 community, health, environment, and business groups in California is backing a bill now in the Assembly that will cleanup abandoned and potentially contaminated commercial or industrial properties, and save the state millions of dollars. And The Greenlining Institute needs your help to get the bill passed in the California Legislature. Senate Bill 32, or The California Land Environmental Restoration and Reuse Act, will establish a clear, regulatory process to clean up California's brownfields. According to John Gamboa, Executive Director of The Greenlining Institute, "Thirty-three other states have already enacted brownfield legislation to restore abandoned or underutilized properties and create new jobs, affordable housing, and tax revenues. California can't afford to let these idle properties continue to drain a state with the fifth largest economy in the world." Senate Bill 32, authored by Senator Martha Escutia, contains these requirements to get brownfield properties cleaned up:
The inability to redevelop brownfield properties creates serious problems for low-income and minority communities. "The loss of potential earnings from brownfield redevelopment can total hundreds of jobs, millions of tax dollars, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages that might circulate through our communities," explained Jorge Corralejo, Director of the Latin Business Association. It is estimated that California has over 100,000 brownfield sites that are predominately concentrated in urban, low-income, and minority communities. According to Ben Benavidez, former President of the Mexican American Political Association, "An effective brownfield redevelopment bill could create 350,000 units of affordable housing in California’s inner cities, and would resolve the greatest housing crisis in California since the Gold Rush days of 1849." Not only will SB 32 create more economic development for California through the reuse of brownfields, it will also save the state millions of dollars by streamlining the complex, regulatory process. SB 32 heads to the Assembly Environmental Health and Toxics Committee on Tuesday, July 10, 2001, and the Greenlining Institute encourages nationwide industry support to help get the bill passed. Write a letter of support to help pass SB. 32 - the letter deadline is next Tuesday, July 3, 2001. For instructions, please visit:
Knight Foundation Gives $2.5M for Miami Greenway Miami, FL - The Trust for Public Land's (TPL) efforts to create a greenway along the Miami River Greenway got a tremendous boost with the award of a $2.5 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This is the largest grant ever awarded a TPL project in Florida. Two years ago, TPL was invited by the Miami River Commission to work with the community to develop a greenway action plan for the river. The resulting plan offers a "greenprint" for healthy urban redevelopment - a strategy to realize the potential of the Miami River as a natural resource and public amenity, while spurring neighborhood improvements that will help transform depressed areas into more attractive places to live and work. The Knight Foundation supported development of the plan with a $50,000 grant in September 2000, part of a total $75,000 grant to TPL's south Florida program. The plan's comprehensive approach led to this major support from the Foundation, which for the finale of its 50th anniversary celebration focused its resources on three Miami neighborhoods, two of which will be connected to the river corridor through planned greenways. The grant was part of an unprecedented cluster of funding initiatives for South Florida, highlighted by a set of neighborhood-building partnerships that included TPL's Miami River Greenway Plan. "Effective community development is comprehensive, continuous and collaborative, a point the Trust for Public Land understands well," says Hodding Carter III, president and CEO of the Knight Foundation. "So, even before we looked around for partners to join our community building efforts in Overtown, we knew from prior experience with the Greenway planning process that TPL and Brenda Marshall were natural collaborators." Initial development of the greenway will target neighborhoods on both sides of the river that have been underserved by parks - the historic African-American Overtown community on the north and Hispanic East Little Havana neighborhood on the south. The greenway projects will "bridge" the two neighborhoods, creating pedestrian amenities that link them to create greater opportunities for sharing history, culture, and economic development. Comprised of new streetscape improvements, trees, native landscaping, lighting, seating, comprehensive signage/historic markers, trash receptacles and other features, the new greenway segments will complement the economic revitalization of the neighborhoods, generating new recreational opportunities for residents and serving as alternative transportation routes. Greenway development also will help attract economic reinvestment along the river corridor and in both communities. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities. Visit the Trust for Public Land:
Sen. Kennedy Announces New Bedford, MA as Brownfields Showcase Community New Bedford, MA (ENS) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has designated New Bedford as a Brownfields Showcase Community, bringing together more than 15 federal agencies to help clean and develop vacant industrial sites. The announcement includes an award of $200,000 for the city's brownfields efforts. A former manufacturing and fishing center, New Bedford has lost more than 11,000 manufacturing jobs and 16 percent of its fishermen have lost their jobs. The city's unemployment rate is 12 percent and 20 percent of the population lives in poverty. "This designation will help the New Bedford build the kind of community that will attract new activity and jobs to its downtown," said Ira Leighton, acting regional administrator of EPA's New England Office. "As a showcase community, the city will also create a model for other regions with decreasing populations and high poverty rates." New Bedford, the fourth largest city in Massachusetts, has identified 31 vacant and abandoned brownfield sites and assessed contamination at half of them. The showcase designation will help assess contamination at the other sites, identify new sites and plan for future use. "Congress and the EPA are committed to revitalizing polluted sites that once were given up for dead. Neighborhoods and businesses across the country are proving that the best days of these Brownfields are in the future, not in the past," said Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat. "This designation will create new opportunities for New Bedford to clean up their brownfields and turn them into engines for new job creation and economic growth."
Deadline for ICMA Brownfields 2001 Travel Scholarship: Next Monday If you're a representative of a non-profit or community organization working on brownfields, community redevelopment, and/or environmental justice issues, apply now for a travel scholarship to the Brownfields 2001 national conference - the deadline to apply is Monday, July 2, 2001. Although scholarships will be awarded to those who have not had the opportunity to attend the conference in recent years, special consideration will be given to non-profit and environmental justice representatives. Apply for an ICMA Travel Scholarship now at: Or contact the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) at (202) 962-3674 or jpearson@icma.org for further information.
Glen Cove Showcases Waterfront Redevelopment Success The City of Glen Cove, New York, was once considered the center of the fabled "Gold Coast" and home to many influential and wealthy New York families. However, the Glen Cove Creek area has been the industrial hub of the city since the mid-1600s. The area is littered with more than 50 acres of federal and state Superfund sites and 146 acres of brownfields. These properties, with their unknown degrees of contamination, have discouraged new businesses and negatively impacted the city's overall economy, property values, and tax base. Glen Cove's revitalization area has been designated an urban blight area, with 13 percent of households within a one-mile radius of the district's center having an annual income less than $15,000. Recently, with the help of an EPA Brownfields Assessment Pilot and a Showcase Community grant, Glen Cove celebrated the cleanup and redevelopment of one of eight brownfields sites that are part of the city's Glen Cove Creek Waterfront Revitalization Project. This former commercial and industrial property is now home to an environmental consulting firm. To date, the Pilot has helped the city leverage approximately $20 million in grants and technical assistance from various governmental entities. In addition, private development has invested in a number of properties along the waterfront. The city's overall Revitalization Project will generate approximately $200 million in annual sales and $10 million in taxes, and will create more than 1,700 new full-time jobs. With this first brownfields redevelopment project complete, Glen Cove residents will soon enjoy new economic stability and new jobs through continued development of the waterfront district. |