The California enacted the Land Reuse & Revitalization Act (CLRRA) provides immunity to innocent and prospective landowners for pre-existing contamination for which they were not responsible. While the Act is set to expire next year, State Senator Robert Hertzberg (D - Los Angeles) has introduced SB 820, which would remove CLRRA’s sunset date, enabling this important program to remain available to community developers in perpetuity. CCLR has conducted a summary study of sites that are likely eligible to be cleaned up under CLRRA but are currently not moving forward. CCLR identified 2,355 currently stalled cleanup sites that could benefit from the proposed removal of CLRRA’s sunset and identified that these blighted properties have been languishing, on average, for over 9.6 years, depressing surrounding property values around them and posing potential risks to human health and the environment. Removing CLRRA’s sunset means potential purchasers of these sites could use CLRRA to gain a degree of enhanced certainty regarding cleanup requirements, project timeline, and long term liability. This would hasten the sites’ transformation from neighborhood eyesores to community assets, generating jobs, boosting the local tax base, and producing much needed housing.

EPA provides contractor assistance to research historic property uses, conduct environmental sampling and identify cleanup options and cost estimates. By submitting a short, on-line application, public entities, nonprofits and tribes can access up to $100,000 worth of technical assistance for eligible sites. At no cost to the applicant, EPA contractors evaluate whether a property is contaminated and provide follow-up recommendations. EPA prioritizes sites in underserved areas that are ready for redevelopment and accepts applications on a rolling basis. EPA is currently accepting applications with a soft deadline of May 20, 2016. This is an easy, two-page online application. 

In January of this year the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) released a draft publication called “Planning Healthy Places: A Guidebook for Addressing Local Sources of Air Pollutants in Community Planning.” This guidebook establishes "best practices" that cities and developers of new residential projects can implement to mitigate and/or minimize new residents’ exposure to existing air pollution and maps the areas -- mostly near freeways and major roads -- where those best practices should be implemented. We are overall very pleased with the direction of the Guidebook and believe that it could be a powerful tool to assist communities in building sustainable infill and transit-oriented developments that are fully health-protective. However, we are strongly concerned that BAAQMD’s support of local and regional efforts to promote “focused growth” (i.e. infill, transit-oriented, and mixed-use development) throughout the region may be severely undercut by the Guidebook’s recommendation that cities use their zoning authority to prohibit all future residential development within the identified areas.

Through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NCRS) seeks to co-invest with partners in innovative, workable, and cost-effective approaches to benefit farming, ranching and forest operations, local economies, and the communities and resources in a watershed or other geographic area. NCRS will deliver conservation assistance to producers and landowners through program contracts or easement agreements. Pre-proposals Deadline: May 10, 2016

The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) State and Local Assistance Program provides grants to States, their political subdivisions, and Indian tribes to acquire and/or develop public land for a range of outdoor recreation purposes, such as parks, playgrounds, picnic areas, campgrounds, bike trails, swimming pools and sports fields, as well as supporting infrastructure. Certain State agencies may also apply for grants for the preparation or update of Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plans or supporting elements. Application Deadline: April 29, 2016

The National Park Service will provide matching grants to states for the identification, evaluation and protection of historic properties by such means as survey, planning technical assistance, acquisition, development and certain Federal tax incentives available for historic properties, to expand the National Register of Historic Places, and to assist in carrying out historic preservation activities. Application Deadline: June 30, 2016

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is accepting applications for collaborative, community-based research that will foster better understanding of how ecosystems support human health and well-being. Specifically, this research should examine how communities can integrate ecosystem services with human health and well-being to inform their decision making and management practices. It should also develop information that allows communities to integrate environmental, societal and economic information and to better manage multiple stressors and their cumulative impacts on humans and ecosystems.

Application Deadline: April 21, 2016

Thanks to the eighth round of the Transportation Investment Generic Economic Recovery (TIGER) competitive grant program, $500 million will be available for transportation projects across the country. TIGER grants focus on capital projects that generate economic development and improve access to affordable, reliable, and safe transportation for communities. In 2013, The City of Truckee, California was awarded $1.5 million for a pedestrian tunnel that will improve connections between residential and commercial areas. The Center for Creative Land Recycling helped Oakland-based Holliday Development leverage that TIGER grant for an additional $8 million from the State’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) Grant Program for the cleanup and redevelopment of the adjacent underutilized Truckee Railyard.

Join CCLR at the Brownfield Coalition of the Northeast (BCONE) Northeast Sustainable Communities Workshop (NSCW) in Newark, New Jersey on March 16. The NSCW's goal is to break new ground, offer new ideas, and posit new concepts on the topics of sustainability, collaboration and leverage, resiliency, brownfields, and their impact on community revitalization.