CCLR's Jean Hamerman attended the 7th annual Brownfield Coalition of the Northeast conference and shares her notes from the morning plenary session with us.

Eligible projects must be directly or indirectly related to the environmental impact of the modification of an existing transportation facility or construction of a new transportation facility, The EEM Program encourages projects that produce multiple benefits which reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase water use efficiency, reduce risks from climate change impacts, and demonstrate collaboration with local, state and community entities.

Application Deadline: Tuesday, July 12, 2016

The California Association for Local Economic Development (CALED) is holding their 36th Annual Conference, Fresh: Ideas, Perspectives, Directions, at the South San Francisco Conference Center on April 26-28, 2016. Join CCLR at these two workshops: Brownfields: Legal Tools for Revitalizing Valuable Land and Economic Tools for Brownfields to learn about the basic legal tools and  economic incentives  to transform underused properties into facilities and businesses that generate jobs, tax revenue, and contribute to their communities again. 

On March 21, CCLR had the pleasure of attending the grand opening of Mural—the first residential building of the MacArthur Transit Village pioneered by BRIDGE Housing. CCLR's partnership with BRIDGE Housing and ongoing support of the project over the years has precipitated over $37 million in grant funding. And while the project has been over a decade in the making it has finally paid off. The complex has been named a "model" for the creation of dense, transit-rich and inclusive communities. With the development of more units currently underway, it can only get better and we at CCLR are thrilled to have been a part of it!

Hear from Molly Feldick, Bornfields Coordinator of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska's Environmental Protection Department about her experience with the Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB) program and her recent collabotation with the Center for Creative Land Recycling, Kansas State University, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference this past February in Portland Oregon. CCLR put together two sessions for the conference on the TAB program and resources available for land recycling.

The Center for Creative Land Recycling, in partnershp with the the U.S. EPA and California State agencies will be holding a series of workshops in Southern California aimed to provide attendees with an overview of the process of recycling land and reusing vacant, abandoned, blighted, and contaminated properties. 

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.