Under a new Connecticut law, developers of mildly contaminated properties no longer are liable for prior pollution of neighboring parcels of land, a measure some hope will unleash additional development of such brownfield sites.
The Connecticut General Assembly passed the bill with less than an hour to go in the regular session that ended June 3 and Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed the bill into law on June 25.
The new law removes a major source of doubt for developers contemplating brownfields projects, according to Lee Hoffman, an attorney in the Hartford office of Pullman & Comley which also has offices in Bridgeport, Stamford and Westport.
Such sites carry significant state incentives, but also risks of additional litigation from neighbors or people attributing health problems to exposure to chemicals at a brownfield site.
It is the first major overhaul of the state property remediation statutes in close to 15 years, Hoffman said.
“We have to realize there are a series of sites in Connecticut that are so polluted that no viable party is going to pay for it,” Hoffman said. “We have been putting our heads into the sand when it comes to these sites.”
While brownfield buyers would still be on the hook for cleaning up any continuing sources of pollution that are fouling neighboring properties, the bill would give neighboring property holders little recourse on addressing prior pollution.
Any continuing source of pollution would fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Environmental Protection. For cases in which a brownfield is considered dormant, the developer could tackle the site without fears of legal reprisals, though the mechanism for establishing when pollution was stopped could prove sticky.
 “The reality is that the act only applies to situations where there is no viable property owner,” Hoffman said. “The adjacent property owners are already out of luck because there isn”™t anyone there to do the site remediation to begin with ”¦ To the extent that anything is bubbling over, all sources would be cleaned up and so the adjacent property owner will be better off.”
Also supporting the bill this past spring was Ann Catino, co-chair of a 3-year-old state task force on brownfield strategies. In testifying her support, Catino cited statistics suggesting about 20 jobs are created for every $300,000 in public money invested in brownfield remediation, compared with just one job for other federal programs through HUD of the Department of Commerce.
“(Developers) should be required ”¦ to just look at the four corners of the site and remediate the site, and not chase it down rivers,” Catino said.
Due to strict zoning requirements in much of Fairfield County and a plethora of old industrial sites, Hoffman joked that brownfield redevelopment carries its own catchphrase here: “commercial development.”
Whatever the title, the area has had some notable projects the past several years, including Building and Land Technology L.L.C.”™s Harbor Point redevelopment of Stamford”™s South End; National Re/Sources conversion of a onetime lab into iPark Norwalk; and Georgetown Land Development Co.”™s plans to create a residential village in Redding. The latter project has stalled as the company and its CEO Steve Soler work to finalize bond financing.
“Georgetown is a lot cleaner since Steve Soler took over that project,” Hoffman said. “The environmental benefit has been realized even if the tax benefit has not.”
