Money was awarded and demolition work undertaken in recent weeks on separate sides of the Hudson River to clean up and revitalize problem-plagued brownfields, parcels that once were hubs of economic vitality, but which now are vacant and tainted by their industrial past.
But the activity is dwarfed by the need, with some estimates saying New York has tens of thousands of prime locations needing clean up. Meantime, tax breaks skewed to project cost ”“ and not just cleanup cost ”“ appear to benefit huge projects while gobbling remediation money for smaller cleanups, a situation the state is scrambling to remedy.
Last month, the city of Kingston learned it will receive $475,000 in state money to create a generic environmental impact statement to begin assessing and planning cleanup strategies in the historic Rondout section of the city. The waterfront neighborhood is undergoing a renaissance due to its proximity to the Hudson River. Homes, shops, restaurants and museums are being planned there. But rapid progress is thwarted by concerns of what lies underneath the ground. The spot was once a bustling coal depot, among other past industrial uses.
And what lies ahead for the Rondout can perhaps be seen today in the city of Poughkeepsie, which last week began demolition of foundations of the DeLaval site buildings, a former farm equipment manufacturing company that at its peak employed 2000 workers before the factory was razed in the 1960s. The cleanup and decontamination is expected to cost about $10 million, with the state of New York reimbursing the city of Poughkeepsie some 90 percent of that cost. Then a private developer plans to build offices, restaurants, shops, a marina and a public walkway along the shore of the Hudson River.
“Years ago, no one cared what was in the ground, but now we are running out of natural spaces and we need these old sites,” said Tom Buchino, of the Stamford Wrecking Co., which is in charge of cleaning up the DeLaval site. “I”™m a tree hugger, if you will; I don”™t want to cut down trees to build something when we can use these sites. The brownfield program is great, because it takes a polluted property and turns it into something nice.”
The brownfields process in essence offers tax incentives to developers to clean up a contaminated site that is not tainted enough to qualify as a superfund site. Buchino said he does not get into the complexities of tax incentives, but has a straightforward cleanup deal with Poughkeepsie, albeit a more complicated one than a simple demolition job. He noted that any worker or visitor to the site would need to complete a 40 hour haz-mat (hazardous material) training course.
Buchino”™s company has already completed a brownfield restoration project in northern Dutchess County and he said that there is a very practical reason to become involved in the program. “It”™s a good way to stay busy. There are an awful lot of these sites out there.” Saying he was not speaking facetiously, he suggested that swaths of Bridgeport, Conn., and the New York metropolitan area will need to be razed and decontaminated so they can be put back into productive use. “It”™s the way of the future.”
“It”™s a long, long, long process,” said John Peacock, of Peacock Properties, a Houston, Texas-based company that owns a contaminated site on Broadway in Kingston that is slated to become a Walgreens pharmacy. He said despite two years of cleanup work he is not sure the store will open as scheduled in 2009. “We hope so,” he said. “There”™s still a lot of hoops to jump through in order to comply. It”™s close to being in a position where we can proceed.”
The site of a former school bus depot and dry cleaning operation. The parcel now sits with a chain-link fence around it and venting pipes poking from the ground. The fence has been in place for nearly two years, with no apparent progress toward finishing the project.
“There are a lot of rules and regulations to follow in order to stay with the plan that is approved by the state,” Peacock said. Requirements include monitoring wells, soil sample testing, vents for allowing residual contamination be dispersed and ongoing monitoring.
“It takes a lot of time, and it”™s obviously helpful if you know what you are doing and have contacts with the state to get your questions answered.”
Kingston Mayor James Sottile, who helped guide Walgreens through the brownfield process, called the state”™s current approach “ludicrous,” because tax credits are awarded based on the total value of a project, as opposed to the expense of the cleanup part of a project.
Brownfield tax credits “should be pegged to the cost of the cleanup,” Sottile said. “That way, they can stretch the dollars to help cities like Kingston that are suffering because they have brownfields no one wants to touch.”
“There are thousand or tens of thousands of brownfield sites,” said David Gahl, policy director for Environmental Advocates of New York, a nonprofit in Albany. The group issued a report in February that criticized New York”™s brownfields cleanup laws, echoing Mayor Sottile”™s view that current brownfields law rewards developers based on the total value of a completed project, instead of on the costs associated with cleaning up the actual contamination on a site.
For example, as cited in the report, a $700 million high rise residential apartment building project on the site of a former gas plant on West 42nd street in Manhattan received $144 million in tax credits, although the cleanup aspect of the project cost only $20 million. This reduces the funds available state wide, said Gahl.
“To a large extent we agree,” said Yancy Roy, a spokesman for the state Department of Conservation, which administers the brownfields program. “We”™re trying to rewrite the regulations and tie credits more to the cost of clean up than development.”
He said there is no roster of brownfield sites statewide, and did not estimate how many sites might be in need of cleanup, but he did not dispute Gahl”™s estimate of tens of thousands. He said if adopted by the state Legislature, the new regulations “give us a much better chance to lure interest to hard-to-clean up sites. It would make more sites eligible and make more sites likely to get help.”
