"Cleaning Up the Past, Building the Future: The Brownfields Program"
House Public Works and Transportation Subcommittee on Water Resources
2025-05-07
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Source: Congress.gov
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Transcript
The Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment will come to order. I ask unanimous consent that the chairman be authorized to declare a recess at any time during today's hearing. Without objection, so ordered. I also ask unanimous consent that members not on the subcommittee be permitted to sit with the subcommittee at today's hearing and ask questions. Without objection, so ordered. As a reminder, if members wish to insert a document into the record, please also email it to documentsti at mel.house.gov. I now recognize myself for the purpose of an opening statement for five minutes. I want to first thank the witnesses for joining us this morning to discuss EPA's Brownfields program. As we review the program, last authorized in 2018, I'm looking forward to learning from our witnesses about their experiences with the program, suggestions for the program improvements, as well as the tangible impacts it's had on the ground. All of us here throughout our travels have seen abandoned warehouses, dilapidated gas stations, or vacant factories. Often these blighted properties, which are eyesores in our communities, are considered brownfields. Brownfields are properties that are abandoned or underused due to concerns about environmental contamination. And the EPA has estimated that there are more than 450,000 brownfield sites across the United States. Their redevelopment and reuse can help increase local tax bases, create jobs, and encourage additional development. According to EPA, since its inception, the 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.
However, Property owners and developers are often hesitant to finance the redevelopment of these sites because of possible liability under CERCLA. CERCLA liability is no joke. CERCLA has extremely stringent liability standards that could result in a current property owner being held responsible for cleanup costs at a site, even if there was no negligence on their part or if other parties had previously caused the contamination. This program provides common sense liability relief to folks who want to improve a degraded site. The EPA Brownfields program helps community assess and evaluate contamination at these sites and provides funding to help clean up and promote their redevelopment. For example, in my district in Georgia, the program assisted the city of Greensboro in addressing contamination in an old cotton mill. As part of this project, Approximately 2,600 tons of contaminated soil were removed from the property and the mill was ultimately redeveloped and converted into a 71-unit apartment complex.
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