Environmental News

Beckie Himes
(913) 551-7003
himes.beckie@epa.gov

SPECIAL TO ARKANSAS BUSINESS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 13, 2004

FREE BROWNFIELDS CONFERENCE HELPS PUT ABANDONED LANDS TO NEW USE

Time is running short to plan for the Brownfields 2004 conference in St. Louis Sept. 20-22. The conference, with free registration, is geared toward business and industry, developers, real estate professionals, public officials, neighborhood associations and the agriculture community. It will look at ways to clean up and reuse environmentally contaminated properties.

Those properties, some 450,000 brownfields across the country, are sitting unused because they are contaminated or potentially contaminated. EPA’s Brownfields Program helps put them back into use, improving and protecting the environment, increasing local tax bases, growing jobs, and taking development pressures off open land.

In Arkansas, Little Rock and Fort Smith are two of the many cities across the country where brownfields are being restored right now, with the hope of doing even more in the future.

A 28-acre site in Little Rock with a history of industrial use is on its way to becoming home to a “green” facility — one that minimizes environmental impact — and the new headquarters for an international organization working to end hunger in the United States and around the world. Private, state and federal partners, starting with a $250,000 Brownfields award, are returning the site to useful, productive property.

The contaminated site on the banks of the Arkansas River in downtown Little Rock was used for more than 100 years as a rail yard and for warehousing, light industrial, and trucking operations. The new facility is expected to create more than 200 full-time jobs and draw up to 250,000 people each year to learn about world cultures and the issues of hunger and poverty.

A vacant, former industrial property in Fort Smith is being revitalized through construction of a new warehouse facility and planning for additional commercial development. Private, state, and federal partners, with assistance from the Arkansas Brownfields Program, are replacing vacant industrial space. The $2.5 million project will create new business opportunities and 20 new jobs for the community.

The 24-acre property, in use for more than a century, has housed a variety of commercial and industrial operations, including mining and smelting activities from the 1940s to the 1960s and, later, storage of oil field equipment. The site remained vacant for about 50 years before a voluntary cleanup program began. Liability protections provided to the new property owner by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and the Arkansas Voluntary Cleanup and Brownfields programs were instrumental in facilitating the sale and redevelopment of the Fort Smith property.

St. Louis is an ideal location for Brownfields 2004. The metropolitan area has a variety of successful brownfield strategies to show off, including several in the Metro East area in Illinois. That opens the way by bus for mobile workshops offering hands-on tours of the sites and walking tours of downtown revitalization efforts.

EPA’s investment in the Brownfields Program has resulted in many accomplishments, including leveraging more than $5 billion in brownfield cleanup and redevelopment money from the private and public sectors and creating some 25,000 new jobs.

The program continues to look to the future by expanding the kinds of properties it addresses, forming new partnerships, and undertaking new initiatives to help revitalize communities across the nation. Brownfield grants serve as the foundation of EPA’s Brownfields Program. The grants support revitalization efforts by helping finance environmental assessment, cleanup and job training activities.

Assessment demonstration pilots and grants finance brownfield inventories, planning, environmental assessments, and community outreach. Brownfields Cleanup Revolving Loan Fund pilots and grants capitalize loans that are used to clean up brownfields.

Brownfield job training pilots and grants provide environmental training for residents of brownfield communities. Brownfield cleanup grants provide direct financing for cleanup activities at certain properties with planned green space, recreational, or other non-profit uses.

Conference participants can register on line through Friday, Sept. 3, and at the conference after that. Hotel reservations are available at a discount through Monday, Aug. 23. The Web site for registration and hotel reservations is http://www.brownfields2004.org.

The conference is co-sponsored by EPA and the International City/County Management Association.

Brownfields 2004 features a technical program loaded with valuable sessions. Here are just a few of the 136 scheduled sessions:

Sowing the Seeds: Engaging Farmers in the Brownfield Challenge
Several USDA programs pay farmers to create wetlands, plant trees, and reduce fertilizer runoff on farm properties. Private companies now use crop plants to remediate contaminated land, where agricultural techniques offer substantial cost efficiencies in large-scale application. How can farmers' skills and equipment be used to address brownfields cleanup needs?

Financing Opportunities and Tools for Small to Mid-Size Communities
How small to mid-sized-communities maximize their opportunities for securing brownfield financing.

Understanding Environmental Insurance
Environmental insurance is increasingly used to underwrite and manage the risks associated with brownfields redevelopment.

Brownfields 101 - Community Involvement and Stakeholder Engagement
Why some community-local government collaborative efforts in brownfields succeed, while others never get off the ground. The incentives and public participation strategies effective in creating economic development opportunities and community benefits and reducing risk from contamination.

Phoenix Awards Ceremony
The Phoenix Awards are the premier awards for excellence in brownfield redevelopment. These prestigious awards honor individuals and groups who are working to solve the critical environmental problem of transforming abandoned industrial areas into productive new uses.

Ask the Developers
A panel of experts from the private sector, non-profit organizations, and development corporations offer their perspectives on brownfield redevelopment.

Brownfields Topics for Tribes
Like other governmental entities, Native Americans are tackling brownfield projects on tribal lands. This is an interactive discussion to learn more about federal resources available to help with tribal brownfield projects.

Financing Strategies for Non-Profits
More and more non-profit and community organizations are managing brownfield projects and finding their own financial resources. This session helps uncover new ideas for and financing packages for the growing number of non-profit "developers."

Block Grants for Brownfields
An open discussion on the use of Community Development Block Grants for brownfield redevelopment under entitlement and non-entitlement programs and how this can be a resource for a community's redevelopment goals.

Investing in Citizens: Putting People to Work
Investing in communities is a fundamental concept of brownfield redevelopment. Equally important but often overlooked is the need to build sustainable capacity of community residents. This session will share ideas, experiences and perspectives on linkage with developers, job creation, job training, job development and neighborhood involvement.

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Learn more about brownfields
http://www.epa.gov/brownfields

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