TABLE OF CONTENTS Charles Bartsch provides a broad-ranging perspective on many of the issues involved with brownfields projects in states throughout the nation. Many of these issues will be revisited in later chapters. The book focuses mainly on Chicago s efforts in this field. This chapter offers insights into other areas and programs for dealing with brownfields.
Charles Bartsch
Brownfields have emerged as the preeminent economic development issue of the 1990s. Communities all across the country have had to address the legacy of their past in the context of contamination, complexity, and uncertainty. Brownfields are like fingerprints; no two are alike. As such, they pose significant challenges for local elected officials and economic development agencies. Redeveloping these sites can be a costly proposition. The complicated process and the legal hurdles of acquiring, cleaning, and reusing the sites can be expensive in terms of site preparation expenses and fees, and costly in terms of time delays. Site evaluation processes, testing, possible legal liabilities, and other factors serve to deter private participation in activities geared toward bringing old industrial sites back to productive use. In many situations, the private development and financial sectors are not able or willing to act on their own to ensure that the full economic potential of site reuse will be achieved.
As of early 1998, more than three dozen states had put so-called voluntary cleanup programs (VCPs) in place. VCPs have gone a long way toward bringing certainty to the cleanup process, defining the necessary extent...
