Superfund Redevelopment Program Overview

Mission Statement

Helping communities affected by Superfund sites return land to safe and beneficial use.

About the Superfund Redevelopment Program

EPA’s Superfund Redevelopment Program works nationwide, helping people realize the redevelopment potential of Superfund sites, transforming formerly contaminated lands into valuable community resources. Today, Superfund sites across the country are home to industrial and commercial parks, retail centers, government offices, recreational assets, renewable energy facilities and neighborhoods. Many sites continue to host industrial operations such as large-scale manufacturing facilities. Other sites support restored natural areas as well as parks and recreation facilities. Superfund Redevelopment can revitalize local economies with jobs, new businesses, tax revenues and local spending.

Protecting Human Health and the Environment

Understanding and supporting the current and future use of Superfund sites informs all phases of the cleanup process, from assessing the risk of contamination at a site and selecting cleanup plans to making sure the site does not pose a risk in the future and people’s health and the environment are protected from contamination. The Superfund Redevelopment Program helps parties think about reuse and cleanup alongside each other, highlighting opportunities to make the most of cleanups. The program emphasizes the connections between cleanup, protection of people’s health and environment, and reuse across a wide range of innovative materials and tools.

Partnerships

The Superfund Redevelopment Program relies on close working relationships with other EPA programs and EPA’s regional offices, as well as strong partnerships with Tribes, other federal agencies, states, communities and other stakeholders, to maximize available resources and help parties transform reuse visions into reality.

The program works with partners, bringing expertise, experience and resources to improve the health of American families and protect the environment. The program strives to understand issues and challenges facing communities, to answer questions fairly and equitably, and to provide support that enables the return of sites to appropriate, beneficial use. Collaborations focus on liability protections, economic development and other priorities.

Promoting Strategies

The Superfund Redevelopment Program shares perspectives, lessons learned and best practices to pave the way for more reuse and celebrate reuse successes. The program’s wide-ranging materials take people inside some of the nation’s leading reuse projects, exploring the challenges that stakeholders faced and the solutions they found to make reuse happen. The materials provide vital guidance for communities, Tribes, localities, organizations, developers and other parties interested in pursuing their own Superfund Redevelopment projects. Materials range from brief project overviews to in-depth analyses with stakeholder interviews, and have compelling visuals – engaging maps, images and graphics.

Policy

The Superfund Redevelopment Program maintains and updates the infrastructure, guidance and policies needed to implement Superfund Redevelopment activities across all 10 EPA Regions. Through this work, the program assists EPA in linking the reuse of Superfund sites with the protection of people’s health and the environment. Its efforts also include training EPA staff to work with communities as they pursue redevelopment goals and expanding a national network of professionals that guides the program's implementation. The Superfund Redevelopment Program also explores and develops tools and resources to overcome reuse barriers and enable successful project outcomes.

Tracking Reuse Information and Impacts

The social, economic and environmental outcomes associated with Superfund Redevelopment activities are remarkable. The Superfund Redevelopment Program tracks this information, showing how linking reuse and the protection of people’s health and the environment through effective policies, partnerships and outreach meaningfully impacts communities and provides opportunities for redevelopment. The program collects, tracks and shares information about the number of Superfund sites in reuse and the uses supported on those sites, recreational and ecological uses at sites, renewable energy generation at sites, the economic benefits of returning sites to beneficial use, and the number of cleaned-up Superfund sites that can be returned to beneficial use.

Former Nansemond Ordnance Depot Reuse Event: