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By Robert V. Colangelo
While staying overnight in Hartford to launch the Connecticut chapter of the
NBA last month, I entered my hotel room and was greeted by a picture of an innocent-looking
spotted owl on a tag hanging on the bathroom door. The door tag was encouraging
me to protect the environment by reusing my bathroom towel so that the hotel
could save water and energy by washing fewer towels, hence conserving resources,
saving the environment and protecting the spotted owl. And all I had to do to
save the environment and protect this innocent creature was to hang my wet towel
and let it dry for use the next day.
Was the hotel really concerned about saving the spotted owl, or were they interested in lowering their operating costs — using environmental protection and conservation as a way to mask their true intent? It is hard to say, but if the outcome was to cause me to use less water and energy and foster conservation, does it matter?
You can see many examples of how both government and business encourage us to be stewards of the environment and change our behavior to conserve energy, recycle commodities and save the earth. Many of us in the brownfield business have long espoused that the redevelopment of brownfields is the ultimate recycling process — putting unproductive urban infill properties back to productive use — saving green space and cleaning up blight. However, redevelopment can also be lucrative.
Brownfields are a priority for the current administration, whether the reasons behind it are right or wrong. The brownfield program has proven to be the only environmental bright spot in an administration that has an environmental track record even spottier than the owl. The fact that the U.S. has declined to be involved in the Kyoto pact does not make us an environmental leader in the international market. Domestically, the Bush administration has not taken a lead on environmental issues either.
Funding has been cut to many EPA enforcement programs and Bush is now looking to gut HUD by reorganizing the Community Development Block Grant program that many cities rely on heavily for their redevelopment efforts. The good news is that the U.S. EPA will receive $210 million for the national brownfield program; this is an increase of $46.9 million over 2005.
Deciphering the federal budget and understanding the true intent behind program allocations is like Winston Churchill’s description of the Soviet Union: an “enigma wrapped in a fortune cookie.”
To help you better understand the budget we have asked our resident brownfield policy guru Charlie Bartsch to lay out the facts and present his understanding of what the FY 2006 budget means to the brownfield industry. His analysis His analysis begins on page 10.
With population density increasing in many urban areas, unmanaged growth is no longer an option. We packed this issue with articles and case studies that demonstrate what communities all over North America are doing with regional planning regional planning, transportation-oriented developmentm. and sustainable development to prevent sprawl from continuing unabated. And we asked Gov. Parris Glendening, the “father of smart growth,” how these concepts fit in with brownfield redevelopment Read his answers on page 8.
For whatever reason brownfields are redeveloped, activity is proliferating and we hope that you find the information packed in these pages useful to your efforts. And by the way, for those who find guilt a good motivator — if you don’t read this magazine, fewer urban infill properties will be recycled.
Enjoy the read!
Robert V. Colangelo, Publisher
Robertc@brownfieldnews.com