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For New Jersey’s municipal governments, the battle to
find new property tax ratables is never-ending. One of
the key weapons is brownfields redevelopment, or the
process of cleaning up contaminated sites and
converting them into usable properties. However, at a
time when the availability of new ratables is
shrinking, the State’s site remediation program is in
jeopardy.
Due to a few isolated, but highly publicized cases,
environmental activists are now urging state policy
makers to heighten the regulations surrounding
brownfields redevelopment, which will effectively kill
the program and reduce the options available for
municipal government. Today’s mayors and local
authorities need the current site remediation-brownfields
program to remain intact in order to help create new
ratables. In short, saving New Jersey’s
Brownfields Program should be at the top of the list
of priorities for every mayor of any urban or suburban
town.
Hundreds of New Jersey’s
municipalities have old, abandoned industrial sites or
other contaminated sites within their borders. The
loss of
New Jersey’s
site remediation program would be devastating for
these communities. Local governments simply do not
have the resources to clean up all of the contaminated
sites and they rely heavily on both state funding and
the private sector to support this process. To date,
the private sector has an outstanding record of
bringing the necessary funding to the table for
redevelopment, spending millions of dollars to clean
up thousands of sites throughout New Jersey. The
catch is that the redeveloper has to be able to sell
the property at a price that will earn a fair return
on the investment. This alliance between the private
and public sector has worked well so far.
Municipalities get new ratables without adding to
suburban sprawl, and communities get new housing,
businesses or recreational facilities where there was
once an abandoned eyesore.
But in recent news, a few incidents have painted the
program as a failure. In Gloucester County the Kiddie
Kollege daycare site was built on a property that was
once a thermometer factory. The owner failed to clean
up the property appropriately, and as a result
children who attended the school suffered from high
levels of mercury in their system. In Mercer County,
the WR Grace Company lied about contamination left on
site when it closed its doors, putting local residents
at risk of contact with pollution that went undetected
for years. These incidents took place years ago, but
only recently came to light. Nevertheless, they have
contributed to a perception that the state’s
Brownfields Program is broken.
These incidents reflect serious breeches of the public
trust and brought to light, certain flaws in the
state’s oversight of remediation projects. The
concern lies in the legislative and regulatory
responses to these problems. If theses issues are not
addressed properly, it could raise the costs of site
remediation projects to the point where no redeveloper
will undertake them. If that happens, hundreds of
contaminated, abandoned, properties will sit idle
without being cleaned up. Environmentalists have
already urged the state Legislature and the Governor
to put a moratorium on remediation projects until all
the perceived problems can be resolved.
Environmentalists have also proposed requiring that
all remediation projects meet residential standards
for cleanup, even if the end use is commercial or
retail space. These criteria alone could deter some
developers and their plans to build in your
communities.
The state legislature has held numerous committee
hearings about both the Kiddie Kollege and WR Grace
debacles. In response, the New Jersey Department of
Environmental Protection (NJDEP) Commissioner Lisa
Jackson has proposed a series of legislative and
regulatory changes to address the concerns raised at
those hearings. Some of
Commissioner Jackson’s proposed regulatory changes
include the development of stricter soil standards for
sites where there will be an impact to vulnerable
populations; limiting the use of cost-effective caps
on contaminated sites; mandatory cleanup to the
highest environmental standard regardless of a site’s
proposed use; and requiring additional financial
assurance as well as environmental insurance on sites
with engineering and institutional controls.
All of these recommendations will make site
remediation projects more difficult and more costly,
in addition to lengthening the time it takes to clean
up a contaminated property.
Government oversight is necessary and it must be
vigilant, but it must also be done in a manner that
does not deter the private sector from redeveloping
these sites and bringing them back into productive
use. Without cooperation between the private sector
and local government, redevelopment and subsequently
ratables becomes stifled. These proposals run the risk
of suffocating development and economic implications
of a stagnant brownfields program are staggering to
local and state government.
In the next decade
New Jersey’s
population is expected to increase by more than one
million. It is also possible that later this year,
the state Legislature may succeed in capping property
tax bills, effectively limiting the amount by which
municipalities can raise property taxes. Furthermore,
stricter policies to preserve open space and prevent
sprawl will continue to reduce the amount developable
land and encourage the use of brownfield properties.
Take away brownfields, and where will municipalities
get new ratables? Brownfields redevelopment is a
key source of increasing tax revenue for the majority
of towns in New Jersey. Mayors cannot afford to lose
this valuable program.
The State’s Brownfield Program is pro-environment. It
encourages and results in the clean up of polluted
properties. Placing a moratorium on brownfield
redevelopment projects or setting unreasonable
standards will only lead to more abandoned and idle
sites in our communities. New Jersey’s Brownfields
Program is successful on many levels and serves as a
model for site remediation programs across the nation,
despite rare cases where the existing regulations have
been ignored.
The proposed changes to the Brownfields Program will
come to fruition some time in the next 18 months.
Clearly, steps must be taken to prevent another Kiddie
Kollege or WR Grace scenario. But how the issues are
addressed is key. We must find a practical compromise
that maintains the integrity the Brownfields Program
and the NJDEP, without deterring developers.
Brownfield redevelopment is critical to the state’s
economy and land preservation efforts, and goes hand
in hand with Governor Jon Corzine’s mission of
“Invest, Grow, Prosper.” Let’s not get rid of a
successful program simply because of a few
high-profile incidents. |
