County official urges Congress to boost brownfields cleanup funding

Congress should reauthorize, and increase funding for, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Brownfields Program, which helps counties clean up and redevelop properties that have been exposed to hazardous substances or contaminants, as well as allow for more flexibility in how counties can spend the dollars, Oswego County, N.Y. County Clerk Terry Wilbur said May 7 in his testimony, on behalf of NACo, before Congress. 

The presence of brownfield sites — which can be former industrial complexes, older public buildings or even smaller properties, such as former gas stations — can present land use challenges and negatively affect property values, but if redeveloped, can provide counties with an opportunity to revitalize their economies and communities, Wilbur said in his address to members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure’s Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.

Since its inception, the Brownfields Program has made over 10,800 sites ready for productive reuse, leveraged more than $40.4 billion in additional cleanup and redevelopment funding and helped to create or leverage more than 270,000 jobs, said Rep. Mike Collins (Ga.-10th), chairman of the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee, citing EPA data. 

The EPA program is “highly effective” and a “critical” source of funding for counties, which are “responsible for protecting the environment, ensuring public health and strengthening the economic vitality of our communities,” Wilbur said. While he represents a smaller county, the funding is “crucial for both urban and rural counties,” Wilbur added.  

The EPA has estimated there are more than 450,000 brownfield sites across the country; 125 of them are in Oswego County. Without the federal funding, Oswego County wouldn’t have been able to identify its brownfields or conduct the environmental site assessments necessary for redevelopment at several sites, Wilbur said. 

Completed assessments and projects in the county made possible through the grant funding include two housing developments on the Oswego Riverfront, which together created 108 housing units and five commercial leasing spaces, with a total investment of $30 million. The county was also able to use the federal funds to leverage additional grant funding from the state to restore its historic Oswego lighthouse.

EPA evaluations have shown that over $20 was leveraged for each dollar of Brownfields funds spent on investment and cleanup activities in Ohio, said Lisa Shook, assistant chief of Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s division of environmental response and remediation.

“The Brownfields program is a great example of how environmental cleanup and economic revitalization are not competing priorities, but complementary goals that can help build a stronger future for all Americans,” she said. 

On behalf of NACo, Wilbur recommended increasing the cleanup grant ceiling to $1 million and the flexibility to award up to $2 million, to allow communities to clean more sites and account for the complexity of the cleanup process. 

Wilbur also advocated for increasing the administrative cap on Brownfields Program grants, which would allow counties to use a portion of their funding to cover administrative costs, as it’s often difficult for understaffed and under resourced rural counties to “complete these complex grant applications or to comply with burdensome reporting,” he said. There’s only one accountant who works on the process in Oswego County, Wilbur noted.

“We’re a small county with under 1,000 employees, and we’re actually, I would say, one of the larger rural counties if you will,” Wilbur said. “And as you get smaller and smaller, there’s less staff you have to be able to devote to this.”