Cleanup Time?

Funding for two of New York’s environmental cleanup programs is set to expire within the next two years, and although Gov. Andrew Cuomo included proposals for the extension of both in his original 2014 executive budget proposal, they were removed from the final $138 billion deal struck with the state Legislature last month. 

Now, with a little over two months left in the legislative session, advocates and lawmakers are still hoping to see the state Superfund and Brownfield programs extended—and in the case of the latter, reformed. 

“We thought that there was not enough time or opportunity to give it the attention that it needed in the budget process, where things tend to be kind of rushed,” said Assemblyman Robert Sweeney, who chairs the Committee on Environmental Conservation. “We expect to have a discussion, which the Senate and the governor agreed to, before the end of session.” 

The programs appear similar at a glance: Both serve to clean up the environment, and state lawmakers have historically dealt with them simultaneously. 

“As far as we’re concerned, Brownfield and Superfund are tied together,” Sweeney said. “That’s always been the Assembly position.” 

But they are based on different principles—Superfund is a damage control strategy with the sole purpose of monitoring and cleaning up the hundreds of toxic waste dumps that pose immediate health threats to communities around the state, while Brownfield is an economic development program that provides tax credits to private developers in exchange for cleaning up contaminated properties before building on them. 

“There is a different approach between the two,” said Laura Haight, an environmental analyst from the New York Public Interest Research Group. “The Brownfield program is really an incentive for developers to clean up sites, whereas the Superfund program—those are the most toxic sites in the state. They can’t be cleaned up easily.” 

While the governor’s proposal would have extended the 11-year-old Brownfield program for another 10 years—a time frame taking into account the long-term nature of land development projects—Cuomo’s proposed Superfund extension was for one year only. 

“Traditionally Superfund has had long-term funding—these are sites that take decades to clean up,” Haight said. “I think the governor doesn’t want to do that long-term bonding because it would bump up against the state’s debt cap.” 

The Senate, which supported Cuomo’s Brownfield proposal, did not include an extension of Superfund in its budget proposal. 

The state’s original Superfund program was created in 1982 to account for sites not covered by the federal program. It was credited with cleaning up over 300 sites between 1982 and 2001, at a cost of over $1 billion. 

As of March 2013, the state Department of Environmental Conservation had designated over 1,600 sites as “cleaned up” or do “not require further action.” The department also identified 826 sites that were being addressed or were in need of being addressed, 483 of which are classified as “significant threats.” Finally, some 2,400 sites were listed as “in need of evaluation.” 

The Brownfield program, which is set to expire at the end of 2015, was enacted in 2003 alongside the Superfund program, which had gone unfunded since 2001. Despite broad support for its continuation, Brownfield has also disappointed environmental advocates and lawmakers alike, who say the return on investment has not been satisfactory. 

“We spent more than $1 billion to clean up just 150 sites in the life of the Brownfield program, and there were thousands out there that needed cleaning up,” said Peter Iwanowicz, executive director of Environmental Advocates of New York. 

“The system has been skewed so that tax credits are going to build lavish properties … like the Ritz Carlton in White Plains,” Iwanowicz added. “We’d rather see the tax credit skewed toward cleanup and toward communities that are significantly and economically disadvantaged.” 

Cuomo’s original proposal aligned roughly with Iwanowicz’s views: limiting the program’s availability to properties and parts of the state that need incentives for development by only providing redevelopment tax credits for sites abandoned for over a decade or deemed to be worth less than the cost of cleaning them up. 

“Brownfield is interesting because everyone in all three houses—the governor’s team, as well as the two sides of the Legislature—everyone wants to do something this year,” said Dan Hendrick, vice president for external affairs at the New York League of Conservation Voters. “I’m sure they’re getting an earful from business leaders in their own communities.” 

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle admit they don’t expect a lot of legislation to be passed in the final months of the session, in part because it is an election year, but advocates and lawmakers say they are tentatively optimistic a deal will be reached on Brownfield. Whether Superfund legislation will be tied to it is not as clear.