Cleanup project gets mixed reviews
Newsday
August 28, 2007
New York state's brownfield program was intended to spur redevelopment of contaminated properties, offering tax credits to developers and grants to help municipalities plan the renaissance of blighted areas. But four years after it was signed into law, some say the program has not resulted in the expected gains for Long Island-new jobs, revitalized downtowns and increased economic development. Witnesses who testified at a joint legislative hearing yesterday in Cold Spring Harbor gave the program mixed reviews, saying it was rife with red tape and slow to disburse funds. Only a handful of the region's estimated 6,800 brownfield sites are enrolled in the program. "The brownfield cleanup program needs to be expanded and retooled", Sarah Lansdale, executive director of Sustainable Long Island, a nonprofit group that supports economic development that protects the environment, told Sen. Carl Marcellino(R-Syosset) and Assemb. Robert Sweeney(D-Lindenhurst), who, respectively, chair the Senate and the Assembly environmental committees. Some who spoke said tax credits should be linked to the cost and scale of environmental cleanup. Others argued that that would take away developers' incentives to get involved. Earlier this year, Gov. Eliot Spitzer tried to limit developer tax credits, which his office has characterized as overgenerous. Spitzer's bill, which did not pass either house, proposed reimbursing developers for 100 percent of the cleanup, but placing caps on tax credits for development costs, depending on the extent of the cleanup. "Our goal is to clean up these brownfield sites", state environmental commissioner Alexander "Pete" Grannis said yesterday in support of Spitzer's proposed changes. Michael Posillico, a principal of Posillico Group, a Farmingdale-based environmental remediation company, said the current tax credits are necessary because developers take on a greater risk with brownfield projects. "While there may have been isolated windfalls and profits from a few isolated projects... most have helped communities", said Posillico, whose firm has worked on revitalization of the Glen Cove waterfront. "The program is working". Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
