Within the Conference of Mayors, I now serve as a Member of the organization's Advisory Board, and I am a co-chair of the Brownfields Task Force.
The Conference has been involved extensively in the legislative debate on brownfields redevelopment and related efforts to enact much needed reforms to the "Superfund" law.
Mr. Chairman, the Conference's statement today addresses a number of issues before this Subcommittee today. Specifically, I would like to focus my remarks on what is needed to support city efforts to redevelop brownfields, recognizing the interplay between the Superfund law and these less contaminated, non-NPL sites.
Superfund Reform
For some time, the Conference of Mayors has been engaged in the debate on the nation's Superfund law. And, when mayors talk about the need for reform of this law, we have sometimes failed to register our strong support for the statute and how it has stopped the reckless and thoughtless disposal of harmful chemicals to the environment. When enacted, Superfund also meant that the time had come to take responsibility for past actions by forcing responsible parties to clean up contaminated properties.
When cities try to offer a consistent view of the workings of Superfund as it pertains to the cleanup of Superfund sites, it poses challenges for our members. Consider the numbers. In this hearing, we are talking about a Superfund that is involved directly with cleaning up sites at a rate now of about 85 per year. According to the Census, we have more than 20,000 municipalities throughout the country, with sites located in larger cities, in smaller ones, in incorporated areas of counties and in unincorporated areas. Sites are located in highly urbanized areas, developing and ex-urban areas, in ex-urban small towns and in remote rural locations. The facts of each situation differ, the environmental threats, cleanup considerations, and so on.
Experience with these sites and others has generated a substantial record, prompting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to pursue a number of administrative reforms to the program. And, the Conference has been supportive of these efforts and related policies, urging that these reforms be codified to give the agency specific support and legislative backing for these program changes.
Our support for this Committee's legislative efforts and those in the House reflect our support for efforts to update the statute and provide more certainty to the Agency in administering the statute, reflecting the nearly twenty years of experience in the field. And, mayors believe that brownfields, specifically, is one significant area which needs legislative attention, and I speak to some of these issues later in my statement.
Mr. Chairman, I would note that the life cycle of a Superfund site, from listing to construction completion, exceeds the tenure of most mayors. As a result, we have focused our efforts on particular areas where numbers of our members are affected and there is some common experience. For example, we know there are a number of Superfund sites where a city or the county owns the site, most commonly a municipal landfill, or where municipal waste has been co-disposed at the site. Mr. Chairman and Senator Lautenberg, I know you are very familiar these circumstances and the challenges these sites present to affected communities.
Shortly after Superfund fund was enacted, a number of cities felt the immediate effects of the Act's new standards, given their ownership of landfills or in actions related to the disposal of municipal and other wastes. When Superfund was first moving through Congress, there were many here in Congress and in Executive agencies who believed that the new liability provisions would, in fact, enjoin cities and others at the local and state level to contribute their so-called "deep pockets" to augment Superfund resources. In this way, federal resources would be reserved for the most contaminated properties where responsible parties were long gone and/or otherwise unreachable. This Committee's record is replete with discussions and testimony on the municipal solid waste issues. And, we are familiar with, and appreciative of, this Committee's efforts to deal with these sites in your reform efforts.
Last year when then Macon Mayor Jim Marshall testified before you, he made a very important point about the effects of the law and its assignment of cleanup costs at these sites to local taxpayers. He said that the law effectively asks a new group of local taxpayers to pay the costs for earlier actions by an old set of taxpayers. Absorbing these costs, he argues and mayors agree, is very problematic and unfair to today's taxpayers.
And, of course, there is the broader reality of these sites, which are owned and operated by localities in performing a traditional local government functions, the disposal of solid waste. Superfund effectively makes these communities responsibility for past practices and uses of materials and substances, all of which are largely outside of the control of the level of government now responsible for the clean up of these sites. The flow of commerce, and particularly the chemical constituents of commerce, have been and continue to be outside the purview of local authorities, both constitutionally and often practically.
Here we have pressed for municipal liability caps to help communities contribute to these costs, urging that Superfund dollars be used to cleanup these sites. In the case of MSW sites, Superfund's core principle -- "you own it, you are responsible" -- is unfair and should be reformed. Cities that have taken title to brownfield properties, for a variety of reasons, also feel this standard is unfair and should be reformed.
Brownfields
Subsequent to Superfund's passage, local officials and others never fully understood how these liability strictures would later fuel the phenomenon we now called brownfields. So that while, on one hand, Superfund was sending the strongest signal possible that contamination of land, buildings and the like will not be tolerated, we were also signaling to those parties trying to recycle our nation's land to proceed at their own risk.
Our survey work at the Conference shows that brownfields throughout the nation is a problem of significant proportion. And, we believe that our collective efforts among federal, state, regional and local governments and their agencies are far too modest given the scale of this national problem. Let me talk about the problem, as the Conference recently set forth last month in its Third National Report on Brownfields Redevelopment. I have also provided you with my written testimony copies of this Report, along with a four-page summary on its release.
First, let me summarize some of the key findings
-- 232 cities responded to our survey, with 210 cities estimating that they had more than 21,000 brownfield sites; these sites consumed more than 81,000 acres of land.
-- Brownfields are also not just a "big" city problem with more than six out of ten respondents from cities with less than 100,000 people.
We found the obstacles to redevelopment are the same for the third consecutive year
-- The number one obstacle was the need for cleanup funds to bring these properties back into productive use, with 90% of the respondents indicating that cleanup funds were needed.
-- The second more common impediment issue was dealing with the issue of liability, followed by the need for more environmental assessments to determine the type and extent of the contamination.
And, we also quantified the benefits of redeveloping these sites, underscoring why mayors have been so vocal in advocating support for new federal policies to assist communities
-- Let's talk money first. Three-fourths of the survey respondents (about 178) estimated that if their brownfields were redeveloped, they would realize between $902 million to $2.4 billion in annual tax revenues.
-- The second most frequently identified benefit was creating more jobs, with 190 cities estimated that over 587,000 jobs could be created if their brownfield sites were redeveloped.
We have also been working to make the case that renewed attention to brownfields is one of the most viable options in the short term in addressing issues related to sprawl, including loss of farmland and open space. It is obvious that the redevelopment of these sites can make a real contribution to this growing national problem, by recycling existing urban land before developing pristine land resources as our first choice.
Related to this issue, we asked the survey respondents to quantify how many people their communities could absorb without adding appreciably to their existing infrastructure.
-- 118 estimated they could support an additional 5.8 million people, a capacity that is nearly equivalent to the population of Los Angeles and Chicago.
To put this number in context, we took some of the analysis from the American Farmland Trust
-- AFT estimates that 15 percent (about 15 million acres) of all the land that was developed in the U.S. was developed between 1992 and 1997; during the same period, the nation's population grew by 12.6 million.
-- These 5.8 million people, which our survey says could be absorbed by these 118 cities, is nearly one-half (46 percent) of the nation's population growth during the same five-year period (1992 to 1997).
We need to ask ourselves what portion of the 15 million acres that were developed could have been saved if we had national policies in place that would recycle brownfields back into productive use, and other policies to help encourage more people to choose to live in existing communities.
Policies on Brownfields Specifically
Mr. Chairman, as a former mayor, I know that you are very familiar with the challenges of brownfields in communities all across the country. We encourage you to take steps in this Committee to work with others to craft bipartisan policies to advance our efforts, by acting on brownfield and selected Superfund reforms.
We also want to acknowledge the many efforts by the Administration, particularly U.S. EPA Administrator Carol Browner, who has supported many policy reforms and initiatives on brownfields, given constraints of existing law.
EPA's programs and policies have certainly helped, and again let us underscore that we are very appreciative of these efforts. But as a nation, the mayors believe that we are not making progress at a rate that is quick enough or substantial enough given other considerations.
Let me talk specifically about some of the issues related to brownfields redevelopment that would be most helpful.
First, cities need additional resources to accelerate the pace of assessment and clean-up of these sites. Our survey clearly substantiates this need.
As the Committee looks for ways to assist communities, we would ask that you consider some of the following key recommendations.
On funding
-- Provide communities with the option to apply for both grants and loan capitalization funds and make these resources directly available to communities to assist their efforts to accelerate site remediation.
-- Provide an authorization of "such sums as necessary" to allow future Congress' the flexibility to increase commitments to local cleanup efforts. Superfund, as you know, is not a statute that is routinely reauthorized.
-- Provide grant funds to help communities undertake assessment of these sites, investments which will accelerate information on the extent of contamination at these sites and provide the basis for subsequent clean up efforts.
-- Provide an option for those communities that have previously received brownfields loan capitalization funds, which were funded from Superfund Trust Fund revenues, to use these funds under any new rules prescribed for grant and loans fund provided under new legislation.
Finally, the mayors believe that these resources to support local brownfield assessment and cleanups should be provided from both general revenues and Trust Fund revenues. We would also note, however, that the excise taxes, which the Conference supports renewing, do apply to chemicals that are often present at many of the sites we call brownfields.
Liability Reforms
-- Provide prospective purchaser liability protections, extending these protections to private and public parties.
-- Provide targeted liability protection to municipalities and other innocent private parties, who have acquired these properties under certain circumstances and conditions. A number of cities, for example, have acquired brownfields in a number of ways, usually in performing local government functions and in complying with state and local laws.
Future Land Uses/Institutional Controls
-- Provide policy support that allows state and local efforts to clean up sites, using standards that reflect future uses of the site.
-- Provide support for local and state efforts to put institutional controls in place to ensure future use of these sites conform to the cleanup standards used at the site.
State Voluntary Cleanup Programs
-- Provide additional funding support to strengthen state voluntary cleanup programs, using these funds to ensure that these state programs continue to build capacity to address brownfields sites, not just emphasizing the more contaminated NPL-caliber properties.
-- Provide for a pilot project whereby localities that so chose, can be delegated authority under federal law to undertake their own voluntary clean up programs, subject to subsequent state delegation of this authority.
-- Provide mechanisms that will assure that parties who participate in state cleanup programs for the clean up of contaminated properties can fully anticipate the level of state authority to make final remediation and other decisions at the site.
Mr. Chairman, these are some elements that would help communities and their state partners to accelerate the cleanup and redevelopment of these sites.
I would like to make a few points regarding some of the issues that I have just set forth. First, some in Congress continue to express concerns about providing additional resources to communities for brownfield assessment and cleanup. We know that many communities simply don't have the resources to tackle the magnitude of the problem they face.
But, there is also another point that we often make about these properties. When these sites were active and producing economic activity (i.e. jobs, tax receipts, etc.), all levels of government shared in this output. In fact, at the local level, communities on average realized between 10 and 20 cents on every public dollar that was generated. More than 80 cents of every dollar was shipped to state capitols and the U.S. Treasury in the form of income taxes and so on. It is hard for local areas, which realized the smallest share of the public dollars generated by these private activities, particularly those communities with relatively weak tax bases, to absorb all of the public costs associated with restoring these properties to productive reuse.
Another key point is the level of effort we have committed, collectively, to this effort is far less than what we should be doing as a society. Even with the very committed support and leadership at U.S. EPA, it remains a very daunting task to accomplish reforms administratively.
In preparing for this hearing, we reviewed the record of EPA's efforts to issue comfort letters and Prospective Purchaser Agreements. Through Fiscal Year 1998, the agency had entered in to 85 Prospective Purchaser Agreements and had issued over 250 comfort/status letters. This represents a very small fraction of sites in America. Specific legislation deals with some of the issues I have discussed would produce the same outcome as thousands of these letters and PPAs.
I would also urge the Committee to consider language in any legislative reforms which takes a broader view of the brownfields issue, allowing communities some flexibility to address vacant buildings along with land. A new study, which was recently reported in USA Today, underscores the need for additional attention to the issue of abandoned buildings.
Elizabeth's Success with Brownfields
In my own City, I have seen what is possible by reusing these sites. In October, we officially celebrated the opening of the Jersey Gardens Mall, located on the site of a 170-acre municipal landfill that had been closed since 1972. At this site, we have opened the largest outlet mall on the East Coast, with more than 200 stores, providing more than 3,000 jobs. This site alone will generate about $6.5 million annually in revenue for the City. With additional stores opening this Fall, we expect to see employment at the site exceed 4,000 jobs.
As a result of this project, we see additional private investment flowing to the immediate area, including a major indoor sports complex, hotels, office buildings and ferry service to New York City. And, we have had other successes in our City, although not on the scale of what the Jersey Gardens Mall has yielded.
We are fortunate that the City of Elizabeth is ideally situated to leverage the substantial economic and population base of Northern New Jersey, extending in to Manhattan. And, I am not suggesting that this is most characteristic of what cities can accomplish in redeveloping brownfields. However, it does underscore the need for federal policy support to help communities generate their own successes, as you now see on a relatively modest scale all across the country.
Closing Comments
The nation's mayors believe that the time has come for bipartisan action on brownfields and, where possible, selected Superfund reforms. In moving bipartisan legislation forward, you can count on the support of the nation's mayors in this regard.
On behalf of The U.S. Conference of Mayors, we appreciate this opportunity to share the view of the nation's mayors on these important issues.