Long Island cleanup funds mired in bureaucracy

BY JODY KASS AND MATHY STANISLAUS | Jody Kass and Mathy Stanislaus founded and direct New Partners for Community Revitalization, a nonprofit working to improve low- and moderate income neighborhoods through the cleanup of brownfield

First published in Newsday, August 27, 2007

It has been nearly four years since New York State passed its historic brownfield law, designed to promote the cleanup and reuse of contaminated properties. Its effectiveness on Long Island is the topic of a state legislative hearing today at the Cold Spring Harbor Library.

According to reports from Gov. Eliot Spitzer's office, more than $1 billion in refundable brownfield tax credits soon will be given out to developers who cleaned up brownfield sites around the state. But because no local sites are among the first 50 to get cleaned up, not one nickel is slated for Long Island.

But even if the law hasn't yet produced the results Long Island needs, it's fair to ask if it provides a framework that will eventually get brownfield sites cleaned up and back into productive use in a way that achieves regional growth goals. Unfortunately, the answer is no.

According to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, of the 239 sites accepted into the Brownfield Cleanup Program in the last four years, only nine are on Long Island. And of the 39 sites rejected statewide, six were on Long Island.

This is not an abstract issue. Long Islanders want affordable housing, but many residents here resist new housing if they feel like it is being imposed - either by government or outside developers. With that in mind, the 2003 brownfield law created the Brownfield Opportunity Area program, designed to give residents, property owners and local governments a way to participate in community planning and decision-making.

This program addresses clusters of brownfields within neighborhoods, including the conditions that fuel property abandonment. It encourages residents and community groups to work with municipalities by providing planning grants and seed money to help create the vision that subsequent cleanups and redevelopment projects will help fulfill.

This program works not by cleaning up one parcel at a time, but by creating a vision for an entire community - one that includes housing, shops, small manufacturing and critical infrastructure such as sewage and stormwater systems, as well as public amenities such as trees and parks. These are the things that make functional communities and livable neighborhoods, that encourage residents to remain and that attract new residents.

The state appropriated up to $15 million per year since 2003 for this program, but the thousands of brownfield sites that should be advancing are in limbo. The program has been stymied by unnecessary bureaucratic processes, largely attributable to its being split between two agencies, with the Department of State working directly with participants and the Department of Environmental Conservation exercising oversight authority.

Although $75 million has been appropriated by the state since 2003, only $7.6 million has been allocated - and less than $1 million of that has been awarded to Long Island. Wyandanch-Babylon, Huntington Station, Long Beach-Reynolds Channel, New Cassel-North Hempstead and Hicksville-Oyster Bay have been awarded a shared total of $623,970 in Brownfield Opportunity Area grants, but so far no funds have been released by the state.

The program also has suffered from a lack of accountability, as 52 communities around the state, including Franklin Street-Village of Hempstead and Orchard Neighborhood-Glen Cove, have been waiting for more than two years to learn if they will receive funding to do the baseline feasibility studies, market analyses and plan development that are key to successful revitalization. Funding is being held up by the inability of the governor, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to execute a legislative Memorandum of Agreement required under the law in order to award the planning grants.

Many people look at abandoned and contaminated properties as the reason some communities are neglected and deteriorating. But these properties represent opportunities to meet real and pressing community needs: affordable housing, good jobs, educational and community facilities, waterfront access and open space.

Those of us working to revitalize low- and moderate-income neighborhoods know the programs created by the state brownfield law have yet to become effective tools for cleanup and revitalization. Yet, with relatively minor corrections - such as linking the brownfield tax credit subsidies to projects that are consistent with a Brownfield Opportunity Area plan, and assigning one agency to run the program - the law could be used to promote the cleanup of thousands of potentially dangerous parcels of land, revitalize communities, inspire thoughtful and sustainable development, and attract the critical private dollars needed for the economic rebirth of Long Island's poorest communities.

The longer the law is left as written, the longer the purposes of the program will be undermined - and the opportunities it promised unrealized.