Center for Public Environmental Oversight
About CPEOTechTreeNewsgroupseGrants

Publications
Subscriptions
Military
Brownfields
Latest News
Staff
Frequently Asked Questions


BROWNFIELDS

A three-part study on Brownfields Policy in Wisconsin

The Brownfield Bargain: Negotiating Site Cleanup Policies in Wisconsin
Robert Hersh and Kris Wernstedt, 03-52

Brownfields Redevelopment in Wisconsin: Program, Citywide, and Site-Level Studies
Kris Wernstedt and Robert Hersh, 03-53

Brownfields Redevelopment in Wisconsin: A Survey of the Field
Kris Wernstedt, Lisa Crooks, and Robert Hersh, 03-54

During the past decade, the primary responsibility for addressing contaminated sites - known as "brownfields" - has shifted from the EPA to state regulatory agencies and local governments. Recent federal legislation, the "Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act," acknowledges this change. The new law increases funding for state cleanup programs and limits the authority of EPA to take enforcement actions at sites cleaned up and certified by state programs.

This decentralization of brownfields policies has made extraordinary, and at times painful, demands on state regulatory agencies to enlarge their mission from a traditional focus on environmental protection and risk reduction at brownfield sites to one that seeks to incorporate into rules and procedures other important social goals, such as economic development, efficient infrastructure use, and job creation. For many brownfields practitioners, however, this array of policies makes brownfields attractive because it provides opportunities for creative negotiations, deal-making, and the possibility of reforming regulatory practices.

The brownfields literature has little to say about how such transformations occur, or how regulatory agencies and policy entrepreneurs respond strategically to the political preferences of state legislatures; we know relatively little in detail about how new brownfields policies emerge at the state level, what groups or political interests push them forward, how these negotiations are structured, what incentives are valued by different parties, and under what conditions these inducements find favor and are actually implemented at the local level.

These questions are addressed in three new reports issued jointly by Kris Wernstedt of Resources for the Future (RFF) and Robert Hersh of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight (CPEO). In their study, which was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Wernstedt and Hersh rely on extensive interviews, document review, case studies, and a survey, to examine the emergence and implementation of brownfields policies in Wisconsin, one of the most innovative states in the country in brownfields.

The first paper, "The Brownfield Bargain: Negotiating Site Cleanup Policies in Wisconsin," is an historical analysis of the politics and process of brownfield development in the state during the past two decades. The second paper, "Brownfield Redevelopment in Wisconsin: Program, Citywide and Site Level Studies," relies primarily on case studies to examine how the legislative and administrative reforms of the state's brownfield program influenced the behavior and choices of local government officials and private sector participants. And in the final paper, "Brownfield Redevelopment in Wisconsin: A Survey of the Field," the authors report on a survey of some 250 brownfield stakeholders, including elected officials, staff from economic and community development agencies, attorneys, developers, and representatives from non- profit organizations. The paper analyzes how different groups perceive the environmental and economic benefits of brownfields as well as the principal barriers to more effective brownfields redevelopment.

These papers can be downloaded from CPEO at:
http://www.cpeo.org/brownfields/br_papers.html#papers

or from RFF at:
http://www.rff.org/rff/news/features/brownfields.cfm.


 

About CPEO | TechTree | Newsgroups | eGrants | Publications
Subscriptions | Military | Brownfields | Latest News | FAQs