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September 12, 2003 Contact: Leora Hanser
For Immediate Release (212) 490-0001
New York City – As New York State legislators return to Albany for a special session to pass the long-debated brownfields legislation, the New Democracy Project (NDP) released Transforming the Urban Landscape: Brownfield Redevelopment and the Future of New York, authored by NDP Senior Research Fellow and Fordham Law Professor Sheila Foster.
Transforming the Urban Landscape discusses the important role that brownfields play in revitalizing communities – and how a lack of state action has hindered, if not prevented, the economic development of municipalities throughout New York State. After years of legislative gridlock and as other states across the country have developed their own methods of remediating brownfields, New York is poised to lead the way towards successful brownfields redevelopment.
Usually located in urban areas, brownfields are contaminated, abandoned or under-utilized properties. The absence of an effective state brownfields program has led to urban sprawl as developers build on “greenfields,” properties where less risk is involved and there is no need to conduct a potentially costly site clean up. In New York, the majority of brownfields are located in and around New York City.
In her report, Professor Foster describes the history of brownfield remediation and redevelopment, offers the New Jersey brownfields program as an exemplary case study and provides both an analysis of the bill before the Legislature as well as suggestions for the future. According to Foster, an effective state brownfields redevelopment and revitalization policy would include:
• Financial incentives to offset costs associated with brownfields and make them more attractive to private developers than greenfields.
• Direct assistance – including grants and loans – to municipalities and non-profit community-based organizations.
• Flexible, but protective, cleanup standards.
• Some liability protection to those who undertake significant cleanup and redevelopment.
• Community involvement in the decisions of remediation and reuse options.
• Aggressive promotion of public/private partnerships.
The report emphasizes how the current proposal lacks – and should have – more specific standards for community input and participation in the brownfield development process.
“[Lawmakers] deserve praise for coming together around a good consensus proposal,” Professor Foster states in her report. “But the suggested improvements [laid out in the report] to assure real community participation would strengthen and not undo the existing compromise proposal.”
For copies of Transforming the Urban Landscape: Brownfield Redevelopment and the Future of New York, please visit www.newdemocracyproject.com or email mail@newdemocracyproject.com.
The New Democracy Project (NDP) is a New York City-based national/urban affairs public policy institute founded by its president Mark Green. Through innovative and well-publicized research, NDP seeks to provide policymakers and the public with thoughtful solutions that promote democratic participation, economic fairness and social justice.
A Professor of Law at Fordham University, Sheila Foster is the author of numerous publications on environmental justice in top law journals, including the California Law Review, Harvard Environmental Law Review and the Ecology Law Quarterly and (with Luke Cole) of From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement (N.Y.U .Press, 2001). In addition, Professor Foster has provided legal support and assistance to community-based environmental justice groups in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. She sits on the Environmental Law Committee of the New York Bar Association and received her B.A. from University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and her J.D. from University of California-Berkeley.
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