First, I want to express my gratitude to Chairman Chafee and Senator Lautenberg for your leadership in introducing a legislative initiative that holds so much promise for our nation's neighborhoods. The Subcommittee's expeditious consideration of the bill and the many cosponsors working with you to advance it affirm the central, transformative importance of brownfields restoration and reuse. In our own work with local partners across America, The Trust for Public Land has witnessed first-hand how reclamation of derelict properties can bring new life not only to the landscape, but to the economies and the spirit of communities as well.
TPL, Green Spaces, and Brownfields
Since 1972, TPL has worked to protect land for people, helping government agencies, property owners, and local interests to establish and enhance public spaces for public use and enjoyment. By arranging conservation real estate transactions, TPL has facilitated the protection of well over a million acres of park, forest, agricultural, and other resource lands. Through these "win-win" partnerships, many communities have woven an appropriate open-space thread into their overall land-use fabric. In the process, they have recognized the interdependence of the built environment and the natural one, and have reaped the benefits of balanced growth. . At the same time, land-use trends on a national scale are raising new concerns about whether this tenuous balance can be maintained. We have seen the rate of open space conversion more than double in the past decade; according to recent Department of Agriculture statistics, farmland and other open space is yielding to development at an average rate of nearly 400 acres every hour. And from the wilderness to the inner city, even as these open spaces are being lost, Americans are more and more urgently expressing their need for more parks, greenways, wildlife areas, community gardens, and scenic protection.
From TPL's earliest days, it has been clear that brownfields even before the word was coined have been a necessary, integral component of any full-fledged strategy to meet the needs of both development and conservation. Left unremediated, these idled properties pose a serious, often-insurmountable threat to neighborhood stability, economic development, public health and safety, and quality of life. Conversely, brownfields reclamation through new commercial or residential development, or through creation of new community parks or playgrounds, or through a combination of these land uses can spark a true neighborhood renaissance.
In some of TPL's first projects, in the inner cities of Newark and Oakland, we watched just this sort of redemption as community groups turned trash-strewn, contaminated lots into gardens and pocket parks. Since then, we have participated in a wide range of brownfields-to-parks conversions. In Atlanta, new visitor facilities at the Martin Luther King National Historic Site have replaced an old Scripto Pen factory. On Seattle's Elliot Bay, a contaminated former Unocal site is being cleaned up and transformed into a waterfront sculpture garden. And along the Los Angeles River that desolate concrete channel best known as a film location for "Terminator" movies new parks and recreation areas are rising up on previously contaminated factory sites.
There is ample historical precedent for these powerful symbols of neighborhood renewal. In Kansas City, for example, abandoned industrial sites were the foundation for the city's entire park system. Chicago's long-admired lakefront park system sits on the site of the city's former tannery district; New York's Bryant Park and Boston's Charles River greenway have similarly challenged pedigrees. And in each case, the greening of abandoned lands brought new private investment, new economic opportunity, and new urban vitality.
Moreover, just as newspaper recycling saves trees, brownfields recycling saves undeveloped landscapes. The simple fact is that there is not enough "new" land in our urban areas and rapidly growing suburbs to provide for the mix of open space and development upon which healthy communities depend. Each of the estimated 450,000 to 600,000 brownfields in America is a missed opportunity for a public recreation facility, a housing complex, or an office park that likely will be built elsewhere. Consequently, unrestored brownfields serve only to ramp up the competing land-use pressures on the ever-shrinking inventory of pristine lands.
Plainly put, brownfields recovery can green neighborhoods, resolve development-versus-preservation conflicts, promote economic expansion, and inhibit sprawl. For all of these reasons, TPL encourages the Subcommittee to add some much-needed arrows to the brownfields-conversion quiver by considering and reporting S. 2700. The work of local governments and other community partners with whom we work would be enhanced exponentially by the resources provided in Title I of the bill. We particularly appreciate the significant increase in local capacity that the bill's various funding provisions would afford.
S. 2700 New Tools to Renew Lands
The structure and mechanisms of federal funding under the Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act will provide a substantial and much-needed federal commitment to urgent community needs. In tandem with the considerable nonfederal partnership support that this legislation will leverage, S. 2700 will spur the clean-up and reuse of a broad spectrum of currently idle properties. In turn, these restoration success stories will promote precisely the kind of economic, environmental, and quality-of-life balance discussed above.
The Trust for Public Land is especially encouraged by the inclusion of the following specifics in S. 2700.
· TPL believes that the criteria for entities eligible to receive grants and loans are appropriately inclusive. This section permits an appropriate diversity of conservation and/or redevelopment partners including Indian tribes and state-created conservancies to participate.
· The bill's Site Characterization and Assessment Grants are similar to the successful model of EPA's assessment demonstration pilot program, which already have been an important component in brownfields-to-parks conversions.
· Within the proposed revolving loan funds, we appreciate the bill's tailored seed-money approach regarding remediation funding, including the authorization of grants where recipients are unable to draw upon other funding sources. This provision will address concerns that underserved communities might not be able to benefit from this bill. It is precisely these communities that have some of the greatest needs for, and stand to reap the greatest benefits from, brownfields revitalization.
· Along similar lines, we strongly endorse the bill's encouragement of grants for the "creation of, preservation of, or addition to a park, a greenway, undeveloped property, recreational property " This provision puts brownfields-to-parks conversions, which do not typically generate an ongoing revenue stream from which a loan might be repaid, on an even footing with economic redevelopment. As a result, it will ensure that parkland conversions will improve life in brownfields-affected neighborhoods as well as securing outlying lands against the tide of sprawl.
· The bill as introduced also contains a number of important flexibilities for EPA to adaptively apply resources to areas where the need is greatest. Among these are provisions allowing for increased assessment grants for more critical and difficult projects; additional support for communities best able to leverage nonfederal commitments; assistance for communities to develop site remediation programs; and the potential waiver of the program's matching requirement for communities truly unable to meet this obligation.
· We also support the bill's grant ranking criteria. Among these are further encouragements for environmental justice projects, economic stimulus, brownfields-to-parks conversion, synergy with nonfederal funds, and use of existing infrastructure. This latter preference is a particularly useful inducement for smart growth.
· Last and certainly not least, the meaningful annual funding levels for these programs will allow the federal government to become a true partner to state and local entities working to reclaim their landscapes.
With all these benefits, the Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act of 2000 will enable urgently needed, place-specific federal participation in efforts across the country to foster recreation, open space opportunities, and redevelopment on appropriate sites, and by extension will help to conserve undeveloped resource lands that might otherwise be built upon.
Mr. Chairman, please accept the thanks of the Trust for Public Land for your commitment to and craftsmanship of S. 2700 and we look forward to working with you, Chairman Smith, Senators Lautenberg and Baucus, and the bill's other cosponsors toward enactment.