Where We Want to Live by Ryan Gravel

Author:Ryan Gravel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2016-02-03T05:00:00+00:00

Brownfields (2004)

The mitigation of environmentally contaminated industrial land, or brownfields, was always an inherent aspect of the Atlanta Beltline. It incentivizes the private market to remediate adjacent minor brownfields, providing a valuable public benefit at no direct cost to taxpayers. This is especially important for communities where a history of “relaxed” environmental regulations has contributed to disinvestment and blight.

Brownfields became a more intentional part of the Atlanta Beltline’s case in 2004 with the citywide Sustainable Brownfields Program, which focused early efforts toward sites along the loop. This continued in the context of the Redevelopment Plan the next year when brownfield conditions helped the project qualify as a “redevelopment area” under Georgia’s Redevelopment Powers Law. The plan also made brownfield remediation an eligible expense for TAD funding, but recommended that this should be used only in areas where the Atlanta Beltline’s public amenity is still not sufficient alone to provide an incentive for the desired private-sector cleanup.

The project’s potential for meaningful remediation has also attracted regulatory agencies to support more aggressive cleanup efforts. Both the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the state Environmental Protection Division (EPD) offered early assistance, bringing our story to the forefront of discussion in these circles nationally. It even won the EPA’s Overall Smart Growth Project of the Year in 2013 because in addition to cleanup efforts, the project then puts those reclaimed land assets in service to a significant community purpose.

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