New Brownfields Rules
Could Be Burdensome
By Ray A. Smith, The Wall Street Journal Online
Individuals from 25 groups representing real estate, the environment and the government have been meeting with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help compose a new brownfields rule that they hope will encourage redevelopment of tainted sites.
But three months into the process, some participants are expressing concern that what's being proposed will do just the opposite. Groups such as the National Association of Home Builders and the Real Estate Roundtable are among real-estate interests who say some ideas being discussed are, in some cases, tougher than current standards, and could actually discourage redevelopment.
The effort to create the rule stems from President Bush's signing last year of the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act, which protects from liability, with certain conditions, prospective purchasers of brownfields and owners of adjacent properties that may have been cross-contaminated. The law requires that the EPA establish due-diligence standards and practices for prospective buyers by 2004. (There's an interim standard in place.) The law would have wide implications for the estimated 450,000 brownfield sites in the U.S., removing eyesores and rejuvenating blighted communities.
According to several people at the EPA meeting earlier this month, a heated debate erupted over whether the new rule should require interviews with owners or occupants of sites adjacent to the for-sale property. Some participants argue this would make the redevelopment process more burdensome as it would add another layer of inquiry. Some also raised transaction confidentiality concerns.
"We don't want to make these requirements so different from existing standards that it makes [redevelopment] more difficult and more expensive to do," says Roger Platt, senior vice president of the Real Estate Roundtable, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group.
But some participants say asking neighbors about the property could be an effective way to find out information not in records. "Somehow the complete record is not really complete until you ask the people who have been living there and who truly know the history of the site," says Vernice Miller-Travis, co-founder of West Harlem Environmental Action Inc., a New York-based environmental justice organization.
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