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  • 16 Nov 2017 11:44 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Co-authored by Beth Barton of the BCONE Advisory Board and Founding Member of NSCW

    The Connecticut General Assembly adjourned in June and now – 123 days later – Governor Dannel Malloy last Tuesday signed into law a two-year state budget. The governor did not adopt the budget, as passed overwhelmingly by both houses of the General Assembly, in its entirety. He exercised his line-item veto authority to eliminate appropriations in support of a proposed hospital tax. Other programs were not directly affected by the governor’s line-item veto. There are several significant budget provisions on the environmental front, though.

    To read the remainder of this article, please click on the following link to be directed to Day Pitney LLP's website --> 

    https://www.daypitney.com/insights/publications/2017/11/08-connecticut-has-a-budget-key-environmental

  • 07 Nov 2017 10:20 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    by AD CRABLE, Lancaster Online (PA)

    Out of an old, polluted brownfields lot in Mount Joy Borough has arisen a new public place for quiet.

    Borough officials on Wednesday will snip the ribbon on Old Standby Park, a half-acre of open space on the western edge of the town at 223 W. Main St. The ceremony will be held at 4 p.m.

    “It’s a nice quiet space where you can go and spend time with your kids and admire the vegetation,” observes Sam Sulkosky, the borough’s manager.



    For the entire article, see
    http://lancasteronline.com/news/local/new-park-on-old-polluted-power-plant-site-opens-in/article_072372d2-be66-11e7-8238-878dcdf30b66.html

  • 07 Nov 2017 10:15 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    by Dawn White, WHTM ABC-27 TV News (Harrisburg, PA)

    State and Cumberland County officials broke ground Wednesday on a vacant property destroyed five years ago in a raging fire. Now plans are underway to redevelop the land.

    A fence lines a bare field in Carlisle, but leaders expect redevelopment of the 48-acre Industrial Brownfield to have a huge impact on the local economy.

    “I grew up a few blocks from here. I remember this. This was an active factory. You had folks coming to work every day,” said Mayor Tim Scott, (D-Carlisle).

    That all changed in May of 2012 when a massive fire tore through the old Masland Factory. New life was dug into the ground where hundreds of people used to work with a row of golden shovels.



    For the entire article, see
    http://abc27.com/2017/11/02/ground-broken-for-redevelopment-on-land-of-former-48-acre-masland-factory/

  • 06 Nov 2017 3:23 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Big problems come in small packages—gas stations are often located in prime locations vital to local prosperity
    by Steve Dwyer

    From a size standpoint, retail properties like gas stations, even dry cleaners, are dwarfed by the overall civic magnitude of such sites as former auto plants and steel mills.

    As most brownfield and smart-growth practitioners know, big trouble lurks in small packages. Conversely, big opportunity is nestled in smaller footprints like gasoline units, which have more local-commerce impact than many think.

    We see it all the time. A local gas station and its aligned convenience store is beset by some degree of environmental exposure—starting with the incidence of underground storage tank leaking—leaks that wreak havoc slowly over time. Owners that scrimp on investing in the proper environmental controls—from interstitial monitoring to double-wall tank containment—are living dangerously.

    But out of bad comes some good. Having worked in the downstream petroleum industry for several decades, I’ve witnessed a slew of former modest-size petroleum sites—be it company owned and operated or independent marketer-owned—that sit idle for years, in abeyance while legal hassles ensue and other environmental complications need to be ironed out.

    Or, they go the other route and get back on the tax roll quickly thanks to private-public cohesion. Consider the community of Chicopee, MA, and a former fueling stations owned by Racing Oil. This small “infill property” is viewed by city stewards as a “gateway or entrance” to the city.

    Good impressions are vital in every community, synonymous with curb appeal with a home on the real estate market. The home must stand out and shine to attract buyers, and that gateway holds the key.   

    The longer a former gas station sits in limbo, the more city coffers suffer form a dearth of tax income streams.    

    The vacant former gasoline station in Chicopee appears to be accelerating a redevelopment timetable nicely to get back into productive use, a positive development. The city calls it “a linchpin in the continued efforts to improve quality of life for all residents, businesses and stakeholders in the neighborhood.”

    Work continues to clean up hazardous waste on a small piece of land identified as a vital link in the efforts to redevelop the West End of Chicopee Center in Chicopee, MA.

    The property had housed a gas station dating back to the 1920s and sits abandoned since 2004, when pumps and three underground tanks were removed. The city foreclosed on the property, owned by Racing Oil LLC, in 2009 for a lack of payment of taxes.

    Since acquiring the property the city received USEPA grants to hire an environmental firm to evaluate the 0.28-acre parcel. The study showed it is contaminated by gasoline and oil spills and found an additional underground tank that had not been removed, resulting in soil and groundwater contamination.

    That’s the problem, and it’s an insidious one. But thanks to the USEPA grants,  an infusion of Community Development Block Grant funds, the costs of the cleanup are in place—and a prime civic “gateway” can get an accelerated timetable. After the cleanup is finished the city will request proposals from developers interested in building on the land. And “curb appeal” can be bolstered significantly.

    Don’t sleep on the cache of the smallest-sized abandoned properties in your town. They often serve as the crown jewels to moving your civic fortunes northward.

  • 06 Nov 2017 3:17 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    BCONE joined forces with the LSRPA (the Licensed Site Remediation Professionals Association) at ANJEC’s (Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions) Environmental Congress on October 13, 2018.  Our conversations with the Congress attendees in our afternoon panel, identified a real need for local environment commission members and other attendees to learn how to obtain updated information on sites undergoing remediation and redevelopment in their communities.  In addition, understanding the municipality’s role and rights when it comes to proposals for redevelopment was a big topic as was the availability of incentives for redevelopment.  BCONE President Steve Jaffe and Executive Director Sue Boyle spoke to the attendees about ways that municipal officials and developers can work together to revitalize brownfield properties. BCONE also offered the services of Board members to assist attendees in navigating the NJDEP information and databases.

    New Program Launched to Assist ANJEC Members

    BCONE, through its pro bono support program, will assist with the LSRPA’s Sounding Board and  launch a trial program to support the ANJEC Resource Center. Now, when ANJEC members have questions about the site remediation process and the sites in their communities, the Resource Center will reach out to the designated contact on the LSRPA Sounding Board.  She will assign the question within the LSRPA process and/or reach out to the BCONE pro bono program contact if redevelopment information is required to supplement remediation information.

    This information assistance program fulfills the mission of BCONE to work with all parties interested in putting contaminated properties back into productive use as well as the LSRPA’s mission to serve as an educational and technical resource on site remediation.  Together, BCONE and the LSRPA made it clear to ANJEC members that we are here to help.

  • 01 Nov 2017 10:29 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    by Stephen J. Humes, Holland & Knight LLP

    Buried in an 881-page budget bill passed Thursday by the Connecticut General Assembly was a new program to support remediation and reuse of brownfields – properties long contaminated and underutilized – as well as new job creation while rewarding investors with a new state income tax credit for remediation expenditures.

    The new program, called the 7/7 Brownfields Program, creates new incentives the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) can use to reward new investors for cleaning up contaminated sites and reusing them while creating local jobs in the process. Qualifying investors can apply a credit for the expenditures against their Connecticut state income tax liability for seven years and use the credit to offset sales and use taxes.



    For the entire article, see
    https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f253c21b-49b2-49b0-81af-edfa0128b662

  • 01 Nov 2017 10:27 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    $20 million River Road project to feature apartments, townhouse complexes.

    by Mia Summerson, Niagara Gazette (NY)

    Though construction on the River's Edge complex in North Tonawanda is just now getting underway, 10 people have already asked to be placed on a waiting list to live there. 

    Against the backdrop of the scenic Niagara River, representatives from VisoneCo Site Development were joined Friday afternoon by city, county and state officials to break ground on the $20 million project, located at 600 River Road. The development will feature two four-story apartment buildings with 36 units each, which will be located directly on the water, as well as three 10-unit, two-story townhouse complexes. 

    In addition, the facility will have a gym, a clubhouse and a pool, as well as two retail spaces located near the front of the 6-acre parcel. According to Tom Celik, project manager, they're already working on a plan to bring a coffee house into one of those retail spaces, but the other space is still up for grabs. Those areas will be accessible to the public, not just River's Edge residents, and so will the rest of the property. 

    For the entire article, see

    http://www.niagara-gazette.com/news/local_news/officials-break-ground-on-new-river-road-project/article_7b777ad4-3ebe-53bf-948b-4d39c2ff7b6a.html

  • 30 Oct 2017 2:19 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    by Kenneth Laks, CPA Journal

    New York’s Brownfield Cleanup Program was initiated over a decade ago to encourage private enterprise to redevelop contaminated properties and revitalize their surrounding communities. The program was recently extended, providing greater certainty that the incentives will continue to exist in the future, albeit at a lower level. Financial advisors of taxpayers with qualifying property should become familiar with the new requirements and engage the services of engineering consultants to maximize the potential tax benefits.

    In April 2015, New York passed its annual budget, which included a 10-year extension of the Brownfield Cleanup Program. The state tax credits available for developers who clean up and build on contaminated sites were supposed to expire at the end of 2015, but now have the necessary funding to continue.



    For the entire article, see
    https://www.cpajournal.com/2017/10/23/new-life-new-york-brownfield-redevelopment-credit/
  • 30 Oct 2017 2:18 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Project is an example of the successful reuse of a brownfield site for the production of renewable energy.

    Waste Today Staff, Construction & Demolition Recycling

    Rochester, New York, Mayor Lovely A. Warren celebrated the completion of the city’s new solar field, Oct. 25, 2017, which will help power City Hall and divert more than 2,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 

    Located at the former Emerson Street Landfill, the new solar field holds more than 7,800 solar panels that will generate approximately 3 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually. The field was built and will be owned and operated by AES Distributed Energy of Boulder, Colo., which is working with Solar Liberty of Buffalo as its subcontractor. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority provided financial support to the project.



    For the entire article, see
    http://www.cdrecycler.com/article/rochester-new-york-celebrates-solar-field/
  • 30 Oct 2017 2:15 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    by Paul Tuthill, WAMC/Northeast Public Radio 

    The largest brownfields mill redevelopment in New England is said to be ahead of schedule. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker visited the project in Ludlow Thursday. 

    Baker helped cut a ceremonial red ribbon to mark the formal opening of 75 apartments in a formerly vacant 110-year-old brick building that is part of the Ludlow Mills Preservation and Redevelopment project. 

    After touring one of the model apartments that feature restored original brick walls, columns and beams, new insulated floor-to-ceiling windows, and loading docks converted to patios, Baker pronounced it “a spectacular reuse of an historic building.”

    The apartments, which are restricted for rent by people age 50 and older, are in high demand in Massachusetts, where the governor noted that 30 percent of the population is over age 60.



    For the entire article, see
    http://wamc.org/post/gov-baker-praises-mill-conversion-project


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