Reversing industrial impact: Michigan's brownfield program aims to bring in new business.

Michigan started its brownfield program at the top of its class.Faced with numerous contaminated properties that were unmarketable and couldn't attract financing, Michigan implemented a program to hold polluters

responsible and limit liability for new owners.Each path required a cleanup or a contamination control plan, which subsequently eliminated or limited years of industrial impact to the state's soil and groundwater.Remediation wasn'tthe only result of our innovative program.Many former industrial areas started to see renewed interest from developers and financiers.As an added bonus, development started in areas that already had roads, water, sewer, data lines and other infrastructure.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Today's brownfield program isn't much different in structure than it was ten years ago.What is different is a lack of confidence in the program from developers and banking institutions.While the structure of the program has not changed, administrative goals and perspectives have.

After thirty plus years of absolutely no private interest in contaminated properties and thirty plus years of these same properties spreading their problems to other surrounding parcels and groundwater systems, the Part 201 program started the road to recovery. The goal of the program was to clean up encroaching sources of contamination and provide some attraction for the private sector. This required determining the future use of the property, an assessment of the contamination on site and an appropriate clean up and control plan. For developers who were not responsible for the original site contamination, they were given protection from future liability.

The rules have not changed.Today, however, there are a miniscule number of closures for new owners and approved clean up schedules for responsible parties, compared to the first ten years of the program. What has changed is the decision making process. The program administrators have continually increasing cleanup standards that have made the program unattractive.There is no bright line as to what is required cleanup. Boththe benchmarking process and the resulting goals are in a constant state of change.Either the baseline testing process changes or the cleanup and control plan changes, or both. What results are private parties with absolutely no certainty in their investment.

Both the private sector and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality recognized the challenges of Michigan's brownfield program and underwent a thorough evaluation of the program and decision-making process in a workgroup convened by Public Sector Consultants.After months of discussion and analysis,these public and private interests designed a list of changes to recharge the Part 201 program and published the results in a 90 page document available through the MDEQ website.Discussions within the MDEQ have been bounced around, and legislation to begin implementing those recommendationshas already been introduced.Does this mean the program is on the mend? Maybe.

In order for these recommendations to make an impact, there needs to be a clear commitment on behalf of the program administrators to increase interest in brownfield properties and the number of cleanups. In simple terms, this means more economic development and more contamination control. If the program functions as it was designed, not only will it recharge interest in the targeted properties, but it will also facilitate better use of the state's investment dollars.Using property where the state has already made extensive investments in infrastructure minimizes the overall inventory of roads, water systems,data and energy infrastructure that need to be maintained on a regular basis.

Attracting nearly 6,000 attendees every year, the EPA's National Brownfield Conference is coming to Detroit in 2008.www.brownfields2008.org