George B. Brewster has served as executive director of the California Center for Land Recycling since its founding in 1996. The nonprofit organization advocates sustainable community development and provides programs to facilitate redevelopment of brownfields, which are abandoned or underutilized sites hampered by real or perceived contamination. Brewster has an extensive background in real estate development, asset management and finance, and he serves on the Urban Land Institute's Infill Development Forum and Environmental Council. The ULI published his book, The Ecology of Development: Integrating the Built and Natural Environments, in 1996. CP&DR "Smart growth" has gained attention among mainstream audiences in recent times. Has there been a related rise in interest in brownfield redevelopment? Brewster The short answer is yes. We talk about land recycling, rather than brownfields. We look at it as the key to smart growth. Basically, land recycling is abut redirecting growth from the fringe to the core of urban areas, and that means, in turn, re-looking at sites that have been bypassed or previously used. CP&DR Have skyrocketing real estate values, especially in the Bay Area, focussed attention on land re-use? Brewster Certainly. It's double-edged sword. The good news is that for well-located, close-in parcels that have been bypassed in the past because of perceived or real environmental impairment, the cost of cleanup becomes less and less of a factor in the development decision. The development community is redeveloping brownfield sites at an increasing rate. The other side is the public sector and nonprofit entities who, with some notable exceptions, like Los Angeles and Long Beach, San Jose, Emeryville, look at brownfields as something to be avoided rather than as an opportunity. CP&DR In a 1998 CCLR policy paper you wrote, "Public policy reforms must provide the foundation for ongoing, large-scale land recycling." Is that happening in California? Brewster Let's talk about what public policy reform means. You have got to deal with both public safety and environmental health, and with economic issues. We looked at what other states have done … and we found that successful programs had three things in common: one was liability protection, the second was regulatory simplification and the third was financing. On the liability front, what you're trying to do is deal with the unintended consequences of Superfund. Superfund was designed to punish polluters and to discourage future pollution. Anyone who gets in the chain of title on the property is liable for the contamination of the property, whether or not they caused it. What the state programs have in common is to protect the good actors. … The best state programs extend the protection to anyone, as long as they are voluntarily willing to clean it up. Regulatory clarification has to do with setting clear, minimum standards for cleanup, which protect public health and safety, based on the type of use and the type of contaminant. For example, if you are going to redevelop a site for industrial use with lots of asphalt and warehouse buildings, the level of cleanup might be less than if you were going to redevelop the site as a housing project or park. The idea is to deal with the specific levels of contamination for each known toxic substance and tailor the cleanup to the future use. Without the standards, you have what we have now in California, which is a negotiated cleanup on every site, rather than knowing that all sites are getting cleaned to a safe level. The financing issue is front-end financing. The two most critical things for land recycling when contamination is involved are finding out what's there and finding out what it will cost to remediate it to an acceptable level. As a developer, whether you're private, public or nonprofit, you have front-end development costs that are out of pocket. These are all high-risk costs. When you add environmental impairment, that increases the risk. … In the inner-city sites, an injection of capital can make the deal go forward where it would not otherwise go forward. CP&DR What are the first steps a local agency should take when redeveloping a brownfield site? Brewster There are some excellent educational programs available. One of them is the EPA's Targeted Site Assessment program. Another is CCLR's one-day workshops aimed at local government staff and project managers. There's a tremendous amount of resources available through EPA. There's information, there's a grant program. There's also an environmental financial handbook on the EFAB section of the EPA website. The handbook is a compendium of all the financing tools available for brownfield redevelopment and other environmental projects. CP&DR How does local government maintain momentum during the long brownfield redevelopment process? Brewster The environmental part of it is not all that difficult. Site assessment can be done in a matter of weeks. Putting numbers to it is relatively easy. With the remediation itself, the current practice is to combine the remediation with development. For instance, if there's one section of the site that has soil contamination, that knowledge goes into the design process. You could make the contaminated part of the site a parking lot rather than building housing there. CP&DR So, the environmental constraints don't necessarily lengthen the project? Brewster That's correct. CP&DR What's a recent success story? Brewster It's gotten to the point that between the private sector and redevelopment agencies, the number of sites that have been remediated has become rather large. Virtually every urban site has some level of environmental impairment, and dealing with that environmental impairment is just one part of developing the site. CP&DR Fair enough. What's an example of a project that failed? Brewster It's the ones that are well-located, close-in sites in less-affluent areas that are very suitable for redevelopment but don't go forward because of the uncertainty and misperceptions around contamination. CP&DR What are the misperceptions? Brewster The fear of risk, and cost-uncertainty and liability. There are approximately 100,000 brownfield sites in the state, and most of them still are not being developed. The ones that could most benefit the community are in inner-city neighborhoods, especially in economically impacted neighborhoods of color where any investment would improve the local economic conditions. Those are the sites that are sitting undeveloped because local government and community development groups don't have the tools or the knowledge to overcome the perceptions that come with potential contamination.