Year-end may bring us closer to new brownfields law.

Pedantics among us contend, that the year 2001, rather than 2000, is the true start of the millennium. Regardless of who's correct, the year ahead could well have millennial significance for a large but long-neglected sector of New York State's real estate industry -- brownfields.

That's when the state legislature will have before it a bill that would finally place New York among the vast majority of states that have enacted brownfields initiatives. More than 40 states have done so already, helping to make the cleanup and redevelopment of environmentally-impaired property economically feasible for private industry. But if it fails to join them, New York Will continue to see socially and economically useful deals transacted in neighboring states, while its own brownfields languish in blight and non-productivity.

Brownfields initiatives work in various ways, but their essential effects are to permit the cleanup of an impaired parcel to standards that are consistent with the new intended use of that parcel, while minimizing owners' liability risks by providing documentation that certifies the remediation of contaminants. Without such conditions, no investor could properly assess the cost or the risk of undertaking brownfields projects.

New York City alone has thousands of potentially useful brownfields sites lying fallow. These could be extremely productive, creating significant income while eliminating community eyesores and boosting tax revenues for the city. Perhaps that's why, in a rare act of unity, a host of strange bedfellows -- comprising business leaders, environmentalists, upstate Republicans and inner-city minority leaders, among others -- have closed ranks behind the Brownfields Coalition Bill introduced last year by Assemblyman Vito Lopez, a Brooklyn Democrat, and Senator Carl Marcellino, a Long Island Republican.

The bill is supported by the 73-member Brownfields Coalition, whose roster includes such diverse elements as the Building Industry Association of NYC, the Environmental Defense Fund and the United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park.

They all want to see action finally taken to clean up contaminated sites in the five boroughs.

The Brookhill Group, as one of the nation's leading buyers of brownfields, is an especially active member of the Coalition. Brookhill's track record is an excellent example of why a brownfields initiative is important to New York. We have major projects underway or completed in such diverse places as Cleveland, Sarasota and rural North Carolina. These projects have created jobs, restored property to local tax rolls, eliminated community blight and reduced the need for new construction. Yet nothing along those lines is happening in New York, where no prudent investor would begin such an endeavor under current law.

Prospects for successful cleanup and redevelopment of brownfields have never been better. In addition to regulatory cooperation in most states, cleanup technology has taken giant leaps forward and useful new tools, such as environmental insurance and guaranteed maximum price contracts from environmental engineering firms, have been developed to help mitigate liability and cost-overrun risk. At least five major firms now offer environmental insurance, and the competition has made the products extremely efficient. Meanwhile engineering firms are vying intensely for consulting and clean-up contracts in the private sector, with many ready to put their own credit on the line to get projects completed at a fixed cost.

But none of that will matter to New York, unless the legislature and Gov. George Pataki provide the legal framework to make brownfields cleanup feasible in New York.

The inadequacies of the Superfund have demonstrated convincingly that government cannot address this problem alone. We need the advantages of public-private cooperation, and 2001 could be the year we finally achieve that.