Brownfields redevelopment: “real” and “vast”
Panel titled "Renewable Energy Development on Brownfield Sites: Financial Incentives for Renewable Energy"
Monday, 9/9/2024 | NEW YORK CITY
On Monday at the New York City Bar Association, the New York City Brownfields Partnership hosted the inaugural Innovative Development Summit. The benefits of brownfields development are enormous, as it transforms space from a health-drain into an enhancer of health and economy. Whether the brownfield is a Superfund site or not, whether it is in the mountains or in the middle of Brooklyn, the mission is the same: to clean up a mess and guide the place toward productive and healthy use. I came to this event with a lot of curiosity about how this endeavor would be approached innovatively. What I found was a coming-together of environmental lawyers, government workers, consultants, private sector businesses, and community based organizations.
The one-day summit featured panels happening in parallel across two rooms. It was opened and closed by the Executive Director of the NYBP, Laura Senkevitch and consultant Ezgi Karayel and began with the first sessions, focused on showing changes to brownfields projects through the eyes of lawyers and consultants, and the other focusing on Articles 320 and 321 of Local Law 97, New York City’s sustainable buildings law. The policy panel featured Ms. Karayel alongside George Duke of firm Connell Foley and Larry Schnapf of Schnapf Law. The LL97 panel featured David Sivin and Erik Draijer of PVE, and Raymond Pomeroy of Gibbons. The policy panel dove immediately into the weeds, with lawyers conveying their textual and relevant findings to practitioners. The renewable energy panel featured wisdom spanning how carbon offsets are treated in LL97 (they aren’t), whether buildings are taking LL97 seriously (big ones certainly are), if net zero is even possible (impossible without a net zero grid), the relationship between commercial tenants, their ESG policies, and the buildings they inhabit (companies with Scope 3 GHG targets don’t want to have space in a building with poor energy performance), and where utility scale batteries, a limitation, might go in NYC (peaker plants, is one idea).
After a short coffee break, the next panels, were on sustainable remediation techniques for contaminated sites, such as using colloidal activated carbon to remediate PFAS-contaminated lands around airports where PFOA/PFOS AFFF foam was used in practice or training, as well as the Green and Sustainable Remediation (GSR) tools SEFA and SiteWise. The competing panel was on renewable energy development on brownfield sites, focusing on the redevelopment effort at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and Ravenswood Generation Station, and another panel on financial incentives for renewable energy. The former panel features engineers from firms Langan, GZA, Regenesis, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The renewable energy panels features presenters from Matrix New World Engineering, Equinor, Rise Light & Power, GEI, and law firms Connell Foley and Gibbons. With an estimated 57,000 PFAS-contaminated sites in the US and over 17,000 in Europe, the technologies for remediating this kind of brownfield are growing fast under the pressure. Another clear point is that the NY State DEC has well-developed resources for “GSR and Climate Resiliency in Environmental Cleanups.” Though this author did not get to attend the panel on the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and Ravenswood Generating Station, the information shared in the following panel on renewable energy financing was an innovative blend of new technology (electrochromatic glass), the integration between policy and engineering (goals set by the State’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or CLCPA, the City’s goals, and if they can be met), and the opportunity space for Renewable Energy Facilities, or REFs, which is a “real property used for a renewable energy system or storage before delivering to bulk transmission.” These so-called REFs have recently been added to the New York State Brownfields Cleanup Program (BCP).
The lunch keynote speaker was Ariel Iglesias, the Director of EPA Region 2 Land, Chemicals and Redevelopment Division, a treat to host someone whose work spans such a wide region such as Region 2, which includes NY, NJ, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and eight Tribal nations (Cayuga Nation, Onondaga Nation, Oneida Indian Nation, St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, Seneca Nation of Indians, Shinnecock Indian Nation, Tonawanda Seneca Nation, Tuscarora Nation). His group provides seed money through grants (applications for funding from EPA for brownfields projects in FY25 accepted until 11/14/2024), technical assistance through New Jersey Institute of Technology, and training to build local capacity. Since the EPA’s brownfields program was established in 1995, it has given out more than $1 billion in grants, and has changed how communities address and manage contaminated areas. Its goal is to revitalize communities and promote job creation.
After lunch, conference attendees were offered sessions on Environmental Construction, focusing on stormwater management, and a session from the NYC office of environmental remediation (NYCOER) providing guidance toward working with the office for remediation reporting, as well as updates on their Clean Soil Bank, with its stockpile located at 830 Forbell Street in East New York. Stormwater experts were from firms Tenen Environmental, Blue World Construction, Liro-Hill, GWTT, and SPR Law. NYC’s office of environmental remediation shared its “E-Designation,” which is a “particular notice of the presence of an environmental requirement on a particular tax lot pertaining potential hazardous materials contamination, ambient noise, or air quality.” These are commonly industrial manufacturing, gas stations, dry cleaning, auto repair shops, and places with underground storage tanks or petroleum spills. The Clean Soil Bank is available to receive deposits of clean soil or retrieve clean soil for local projects. The stormwater management panel was largely a technical discussion about the intricacies of water management.
The final two sessions were about soil disposal, a session led by Joel Rogers from Factor Group and Kevin McCarty from GEI. As much as I would have liked to attend both of these panels, I had to choose one, and I chose the other, on community engagement and stakeholder collaboration, a panel moderated by NYBP Executive Director Laura Senkevitch, and featuring Stephen Holley from AKRF, Lee Ilan from NYC OER, Malcolm Punter from Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement (HCCI), and Reece Brosco from Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (YMPJ). YMPJ had recently been mentioned during the lunch keynote, as it just received a half-million dollar grant from the EPA to support their work in community development through the community change grant program. HCCI demonstrated its aptitude in providing affordable housing and doing people-powered work in Harlem for over 30 years, and has been involved in the Brownfield Opportunity Area program through the New York Department of State.
It was said that brownfields is a very interdisciplinary field and one can clearly see that through the panels and presenters at this inaugural summit. Brownfields clearly calls for cohesive teamwork and communication. With the deep well of meaning that is available when doing this cleanup work, brownfields redevelopment practitioners have significant motivation to pull from, and with support from communities, private sector, and government, real progress can be made toward restoring degraded sites and restoring the health of people and animals alike. This interdisciplinary gathering, hosted by the NYC Bar Association, was surely a coming together of minds with different backgrounds but the same set of challenges. As this conference was quite an expert-level event, perhaps in the future there are also opportunities to push outward into those-who-don’t-know and offer them this inherently optimistic way to look at our blighted and polluted sites.