| Brownfields Program = Base Reuse
The redevelopment of the Oakland Army Base was premised on returning a shuttered military base to a productive use. But that goal likely would not have become a reality were it not for a little-known environmental cleanup program that came into existence in 1995 and had some of its first successes in nearby Emeryville.
Through the Brownfields Program, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provides cities and potential developers with a framework for analyzing former industrial sites, determining what new development can safely occur on the land, and providing funding to help projects get off the ground.
“Before the program, contaminated but valuable land would just sit there because there was no universally accepted set of standards or a way to arrive at a remediation plan. It was a moving target.” said Dan Nourse, the environmental project manager on the Oakland Army Base project.
Starting in the early 1990s, Nourse managed soils and other environmental issues on successful Emeryville redevelopment projects for more than a decade.
Since 1995, the Brownfields Program has provided grants for municipalities and developers to answer the following foundational questions: 1) What is the property’s level of contamination? 2) Given the level of contamination, to what extent can it be remediated and reused? 3) What resources are available to execute a cleanup plan for an appropriate development?
The answers to the questions result in remediation and management plans governed by state and local regulators. The regulators, such as the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, dictate the level of site cleanup and monitoring required throughout construction and after the new project is complete. The Oakland Army Base project is governed by such a plans, which influence daily decisions about soil and water quality.
In 2014 the Army Base project underwent its first full year of infrastructure construction. That process is expected to last through 2015, at which point modern warehouses and deconsolidation facilities will be erected, enabling the Oakland waterfront to import and export more goods. In turn, a large polluted and obsolete piece of land will have been converted into a valuable asset.
Similarly, the Brownfields Program deserves some credit for Emeryville’s transformation from a struggling city abandoned by heavy industry, to a thriving retail hub. By the mid-1990s, Emeryville was littered with more than 230 underused or vacant acres.
Soil and groundwater contamination impaired ninety percent of the city’s fallow land. But, with a $200,000 Brownfields Program seed grant in 1996, city officials, the EPA and developers targeted abandoned property ripe for development. Less than 20 years later, Emeryville is the envy of cities wishing they could attract more shoppers and capture the related tax revenue.
Because the Army Base project centers on logistics and goods movement rather than retail or housing, it compounds the basic environmental benefits that come with cleaning up a former industrial site in an inner-urban area.
The project will mean that fewer warehousing facilities need to be built on suburban or agricultural land and that goods will be sorted and consolidated near the Port of Oakland — where they arrive — as opposed to being trucked to the outskirts to be packaged and shipped. Existing and new rail connections will allow a high percentage of goods to be shipped by train, reducing the carbon emissions associated with trucks. |
