Governor Steps Up War on
Brownfield
Cal-EPA says Schwarzenegger backs cleaning up industrial blight
Oakland Tribune, Monday, January 26, 2004
Returning blighted industrial sites to productive use remains
atop Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's environmental agenda, said
his chief environmental enforcer.
And California Environmental Protection Agency secretary
Terry Tamminen promises heightened attention and new ways
to deal with problem-plagued properties.
Tamminen envisions a tiered system aimed at hastening the
cleanup of vacant sites -- often called "brownfields"
-- where lingering pollution problems have prevented development.
Emphasizing that the plan is a work-in-progress, Tamminen
suggested last week that the agency would place sites, found
chiefly in urban areas, into one of three categories, each
requiring increasing degrees of oversight and regulation.
Gas stations and other small, minimally polluted sites, for
instance, would fall into the first tier, Tamminen said.
Such locales, he added, "call out for a much simpler
(cleanup) process to get them on the tax rolls, particularly
because so many are on prime corners."
Larger industrial sites would fall in the second tier, with
the third tier being reser-ved for the "Superfund-type"
sites needing federal as well as state oversight, he said.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control,
the Cal-EPA branch overseeing cleanups, announced last week
it had awarded $480,000 to pay for initial investigation at
six brownfield sites.
The Oakland Redevelopment Agency got $65,000 to chart contamination
at the planned Macarthur Transit Village, and the city of
Stockton has $70,000 for laboratory analysis of pollution
at its downtown waterfront, according to the agency.
Environmental groups and developers specializing in brownfields
were encouraged by Tamminen's -- and the governor's -- interest.
But much, they cautioned, hinges on continued high-level attention
to the matter.
"The secretary of Cal-EPA, if he really means business,
has got to have the backing of the governor so they have the
wherewithal and the political clout to get things done,"
said David Hollingworth, president of the California Environmental
Redevelopment Fund, a for-profit group specializing in brownfields.
"It just wasn't happening with the Davis administration,
so we've got our fingers crossed," he said.
Schwarzenegger initially listed brownfield redevelopment
as a priority in an environmental platform released as a candidate.
The state has an estimated 90,000 sites that could classify
as brownfields, with several thousand in the Bay Area.
Cal-EPA's inability to cut through the red tape and clean
up the sites has forced many cash-strapped communities, particularly
Oakland and Emeryville, to create and manage their own programs,
said Jennifer Hernandez, a San Francisco lawyer specializing
in redevelopment who also sits on the board of the California
Center for Land Recycling.
"While Oakland and Emeryville are examples of success
stories, hundreds of other California communities have been
left completely unable to cope with these sites because of
the Sacramento dysfunction."
©2004 Oakland Tribune
|
