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▶ 0:06:25subcommittee will come to order the chair recognizes himself for 5 minutes for an opening state today this subcommittee will examine implementation of the Environmental Protection agency's brownfields grant program brownfields are generally described as properties that contain or may contain a hazardous substance pollutant or contaminant which in turn complicates efforts to expand redevelop or reuse the site often these contaminated sites are not redeveloped because prospective new owners are worried about becoming responsible for potential
▶ 0:06:56liability as the original company that is liable for the contamin ation no longer exists through this program EPA provides grant funding to States tribes Economic Development agencies and other entities who are then able to study the extent of contamination clean up the site and find a way to redevelop it since 1993 EPA has administered efforts to clean up these sites Congress first formally established the brownfields program in the small business liability relief in brownfields revitalization Act of 2002
▶ 0:07:26and codified it under the comprehensive environment response compensation and liability act the brownfields program has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support and the last statutory authorization expired last September at the end of fiscal year 2023 reauthorizing this program will provide us with an opportunity to examine the program and find out what aspects are working well and what aspects need Improvement I believe taking testimony from our Witnesses today will help us to inform our efforts
▶ 0:07:57additionally the infrastructure investment and jobs act provided an unprecedented supplemental appropriation of 1.5 billion for brownfields the awards funded under the infrastructure investment in jobs act were Exempted from some of the traditional statutory limitations such as certain maximum Grant amounts and state and local C share requirements we will need to examine these changes and understand their advantages and their disadvantages EPA estimates there are more than 450,000 Brownfield properties in the United States this
▶ 0:08:27amounts to a lot of unused or underutilized land with great economic potential broadly we also know that we will need additional infrastructure facilities to support our growing economy and process the materials and components needed for new Innovative Technologies the brownfields program may also be a good tool to help secure American leadership in emerging Industries and traditional manufacturing for example ABI research and Industry analysis firm estimates that by the end of 2025 there will be over
▶ 0:08:576,000 data centers built worldwide as artificial intelligence continues to take off over the next 5 years our country's electricity demand is expected to grow 16% this growing demand will entail construction of additional energy resources so today we will examine opportunities to bring those Industries to Brownfield sites in our communities and explore existing barriers to put these sites to good use in my district in Southwest Virginia
▶ 0:09:27counties state agencies organizations and public private Partnerships have already been hard at work revitalizing former mind land for economic development I hope we can learn more today about how the brownfields program can support these Endeavors and similar ones around the country thanks to our Witnesses for being here and contributing to these efforts first we have the honorable Jim canalon uh Chief Executive Officer of James L canalon strategies where he works on sustainable Technology Innovation and public policy
▶ 0:09:58Mr canalon recently served as CEO of Nautilus data Technologies a company producing data center components with minimal environmental impacts he also served as chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality under President Bush as you all know this committee has been engaged in robust discussion over the past few years on ways to improve permitting process generally so we welcome his extensive experience in this area we also welcome back mayor Christian BD did I get that right all right
▶ 0:10:28from the city of Elizabeth New Jersey the committee greatly appreciates him lending his knowledge and expertise to our efforts to reauthorize the brownfields program we will also hear from uh Christa stonum president and CEO of the Houston landbank thank you for being here today and sharing your insights on the program and efforts to revitalize the areas your organization serves last but not least I'm excited to rec to recognize and to welcome my constituent Dwayne Miller Miller executive director of
▶ 0:10:58Lena wh planning district commission and if you want the definition of what that is we'll give it to you later uh but my staff and I have uh had the privilege of working with the commission for years they've played an integral role in attracting emerging Industries to our region creating jobs and cleaning up abandoned sites in Southwest Virginia thank you all for being here and I look forward to a good discussion today and I now recognize the ranking member of the subcommittee Mr tonko for his opening statement well thank you Mr chair epa's Brownfield
▶ 0:11:29program has enjoyed tremendous bipartisan support for decades and I do hope we can continue to work together to examine and strengthen the program in the 119th Congress I'm certain we all share our love for the places we have the privilege of representing and like so many districts across the country New York's 20th has an incredible manufacturing history that is foundational to its story along the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers many mil towns once thrived factories produce carpets and collars and leather products to name just a few few
▶ 0:11:59but sadly many of these sites have closed leaving valuable properties often on the waterfront abandoned or underutilized and this too is part of my District's history but the story of these former industrial communities does not need to end here with blighted properties and years of disinvestment epa's brownfields program can be the Catalyst for these communities comebacks by creating new economic opportunities that begin with assessing and remediating former industrial sites
▶ 0:12:29in my district brownfields funding has led to transformational revitalizations some sites have become new parks allowing public access to the Waterfront others have been prepared for redevelopment enabling new employers to move in and simply put these success stories would not be possible without epa's programs since 2002 tens of thousands of Acres of idle land have been made ready for prod productive use increasing property values and local tax revenue Pres conserving green fields
▶ 0:13:00and creating jobs we know epa's Pro program has a proven track record of success and provides effective down payments each dollar spent leverages more than $20 and I am incredibly proud that the infrastructure investment and jobs act included an historic investment of some $1.5 billion for the program for fiscal years 2022 through 2026 these funds included $1.2 billion dollar for the epa's program and 300
▶ 0:13:30million for State programs iiga also took important steps to create greater opportunities for disadvantage communities by waving the program's cost cost share requirements and increasing the maximum award amounts I look forward to hearing from our Witnesses whether the iiga has been effective and how Congress best build upon those Investments finally I want to express my concerns that the Trump Administration suggesting that 65% of epa's budget could be cut the majority of epa's
▶ 0:14:00funding goes to programs that state and local governments rely upon without a doubt a cut of this magnitude will have devastating consequences for our districts and I do hope Congress will ensure that the value of epa's programs including the brownfields program are properly reflected in our Appropriations process as it moves forward because the brownfields program is an incredible investment of federal dollars it enables local governments to support environmental and economic revitalization by turning
▶ 0:14:30a liability into an opportunity I hope we can work together to make certain this program has the resources and the authorities necessary to continue its great work with that I would like to yield my remaining time to our colleague and good friend Congressman Menendez and um thank you thank you ranking member tonco I am honored to welcome mayor bage to the Energy and Commerce Committee today to discuss the incredible work being done on Brownfield builds across the country and back
▶ 0:15:00home in New Jersey's 8th congressional district mayor bage was first elected as mayor of Elizabeth in 1992 and as prioritize the Redevelopment of Brownfield sites throughout his tenure he's been recognized for his role in redeveloping brownfields and was awarded the distinguished leadership award for elected officials by the American Plan Association he's testifying today in his capacity as chair of the US Conference of Mayors brownfields task force a role that he has held for over 20 years mayor buge is uniquely qualified to discuss the importance of reauthorizing
▶ 0:15:30the federal brownfields program and has testified at every brownfields hearing this committee has had it's an honor to call Mayor bage a friend and partner and to recognize the success stories in Elizabeth that he has overseen mayor bage thank you for your leadership on this issue I look forward to hearing your testimony here today that I yield back gentleman yield back now recognize the chairman of the full committee Mr Guthrie for 5 minutes for an opening statement thank you chairman Griffith and rank member pal and ranking member tono my
▶ 0:16:01colleagues and thank you to our Witnesses for being here today uh today we'll ex be examining implementation of vpa's brownfields program and opportunities to carry on bipartisan tradition of reauthorizing the program as you all know brownfields are contaminated sites or areas that are suspected of being contaminated the negative impact of Brownfield site does not end within the geographic boundary of the site itself they can also pose environmental hazards beyond their borders and lead to broader economic downturns in their communities and unfortunately
▶ 0:16:31brownfields are found Nationwide legal liability for existing contamination often discourages buyers from purchasing properties for redevelopment out of fear of litigation properties ins it vacant as communities lose the opportunity to improve their local economy we have a mandate to ensure our taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and part of why we are here today is to look at how we can improve upon this program moving forward redevelop Brownfield sit to support new and emerging
▶ 0:17:01Industries potentially even including opportunities to build a state of the state-of-the-art AI data centers the brownfields program has been successful in aiding Economic Development while prioritizing contamination just look at my home state of Kentucky the Commonwealth of Kentucky in the historic fet County Courthouse in Lexington was used for over a hundred years before the Court's transition to a bigger facility shortly after becoming vacant workers discovered structural defects
▶ 0:17:32water damage high levels of lead paint obeses and other hazardous materials the public private partnership between the developer and the EPA through the brownfields program made its revitalization possible this building now houses a restaurant Visitor Center events space and a focal point of the and is a focal point for the community while maintaining historical Integrity you have major sites like the Hudson yards in New York City which is built on a Long Island railroad yard when completed Hudson yards is expected to
▶ 0:18:02contribute $1 19 billion dollar per year to the local economy and I went to school just up the palates Parkway from from uh from Elizabeth and so I consider Northern New Jersey Manhattan my college town and my daughter went to um intern a couple summers ago in New York City and I saw the address she was in a college dorm and it was near Hudson yard it's adjacent but I didn't know that it really existed so I moved her in and I know the difference between what it was and what it is so I was concerned
▶ 0:18:32when I saw the neighborhood she was moving into till I got there and just saw how beautiful and nice it was and absolutely Northern New Jersey is just absolutely fantastic as well and so we have other Brownfield sites across the country I know that we're going to talk about today one in Indianapolis was a vacant 19th century iron Foundry and it was given a second chance to make affordable housing this program also helps us in our mission to expand nuclear power and restore American Energy dominance in the 118th Congress I was proud to see my
▶ 0:19:02bill the nuclear for Brownfield sites preparation act signed into law as part of the advance act my bill utilizes existing infrastructure to lower project cost and further our investments in nuclear power by allowing nuclear facilities at Brownfield sites the brownfields program has been a bipartisan tradition here at Energy and Commerce Committee and this hearing today upholds that Legacy I really appreciate our Witnesses for being to look forward to hear what's going going on in your communities and I look forward to the further discussion
▶ 0:19:32and Mr chair I yeld back gentleman yields back now recognize the ranking member of the full committee Mr palone for five minutes opening of an opening statement thank you Mr chairman let me thank all of the panel but I particularly want to thank mayor Chris BWI who's as you know the chair of the uh of the I guess his official title is chair us Conference of Mayors brownfields task force but I think that kind of uh you know underplays the role that you've played for so many years uh in
▶ 0:20:03our brownfields program from the very beginning uh and I know you've been a a trusted advisor to me on everything we do with Brownfield so thank you for all that and for being here today um we're discussing the brownfields program which continues to be a shining example of how government can protect the public health of our communities while also stimulating economic growth in 2002 I partnered with the late representative Paul Gilmore of Ohio who chaired this subcommittee at the time to write the brownfields law
▶ 0:20:33and over the last 20 years the brownfields program has consistently enjoyed bipartisan support and has been an economic engine for local government and communities looking to turn former contaminated sites into economic centers and green spaces and every congressional district is home to at least one of these sites as part of the program the federal government provides financial help in the form of Grants or loans for cleanup assessments and job training so community unities can turn impacted sites into Parks public housing or new business
▶ 0:21:03centers and since its Inception more than 40,000 sites have been revitalized and made ready for development around the nation and these revitalization projects leverage nearly 280,000 jobs and more than $41 billion in Economic Development so this funding really has been a Lifeline for communities and with the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021 we were able to inject an additional 1.5 billion dollar into the brownfields program and that increased annual Awards by nearly
▶ 0:21:33400% to around $240 million through these funds communities are growing their economies for the future and creating good paying jobs and the brownfields program also benefits public health and safety by reducing contamination in communities that couldn't afford to repurpose contaminated sites on their own and that's just the beginning for every dollar the federal government invests in the brown Fields Program we get more than $20 back in economic return and that showcases the win-win scenario that the program facilitates and it's important
▶ 0:22:03that we keep all of these benefits in mind as we look reauthorize the program before funding Runs Out in fiscal year 2026 we must reauthorize and fund the program to continue to crit its critical Mission and I believe that starting these bipartisan conversations early Mr chairman is a necessary first step I hope we can all agree that this program is more than worth every dollar we put into it and that we can work together to provide robust funding moving forward but what makes today's hearing unique is the chaotic circumstances in which we find
▶ 0:22:33ourselves the Trump Administration perpetrated by Elon Musk and Doge has continued to recklessly and I believe illegally cut staff at federal agencies including those that administer the brownfields program at the epa's office of land and Emergency Management these illegal funding freezes have directly impact of the brownfields program delaying projects and causing confusion among Grant recipients who responsible for cleaning up these sites uh the brownfields program protects our communities and revitalizes
▶ 0:23:04our local economies and we owe it to all of our constituents to figure out a path forward ensuring funding is delivered it's crucial that any discussion of the future of the brownfields program Builds on the program's economic and Community success while recognizing the need for dedicated Federal staff to administer it so I thank you again Mr chairman and with that I yield back gentlemen yields back and I appreciate that we now conclude with member opening statements the chair would like to remind members that pursuant to the committee rules all members opening statements will be made a
▶ 0:23:34part of the record we want to thank our Witnesses for taking the time to testify before the subcommittee although it is not the practice of this subcommittee to swear in Witnesses I would remind our witnesses that knowingly and willfully making material false statements to the legislative branch is against the law under Title 18 section 10001 of the United States code you will have an opportunity to give an opening statement followed by questions from members that said we will now begin our opening statements and our first witness will be Mr canalon you are recognized for five minutes
▶ 0:24:05good morning chairman Griffith franking member tonco and members of the subcommittee my name is Jim conaton I am a technology entrepreneur a policy entrepreneur and an innovation infrastructure developer I have spent the better part of my professional life in and around brownfields and I was privileged to be with mayor BWI at the signing of the brownfields act in 2001 in kakin Pennsylvania growing our economy to meet the needs of a thriving population and National Security
▶ 0:24:35will require a doubling or even a tripling of infrastructure over the next 25 years that means hundreds of thousands of new projects the hundreds of thousands of America's brownfields are the best place to start driving Innovation unleashing prosperity and revitalizing our communities my written testimony highlights five priority areas of American industrial Innovation where brownfields are ideal data centers semiconductor
▶ 0:25:05manufacturing submarine and ship building energy production and recycling during Q&A I hope to be able to talk about my own successful albe a challenging 8-year Saga developing Innovative AI data center infrastructure at two brownfields in the state of California and and many others my testimony today however is going to focus on the critical barriers to success of Brownfield projects the prolonged delays in approving site assessments environmental permits
▶ 0:25:36and connections to the electricity grid these delays either kill Brownfield projects or needlessly make them two to three times more expensive than they need to be whether your objective is growing the economy sustaining us technology leadership strengthening National Security addressing the Energy emergency or confronting climate change fully achieving these objectives is impossible I will highlight four policies to enable immediate and lower cost project development
▶ 0:26:06these policies eliminate process and litigation barriers while preserving compliance with our nation's Environmental laws the first speed bump for projects happens when agencies delay signing off on the environmental site assessments used to clear Brownfield sites for reuse this work is now performed quickly and cost-effectively by credentialed private sector experts using well-established methods developed over 30 years and tens of thousands of projects Congress should authorize an automatic
▶ 0:26:37signoff process for certified third-party expert site assessments the second major delay happens during environmental permitting uh I'm recommending the Congress legislate a permit by rule approach that I call approve build and comply or ABC the legislation would categorically approve a l list of pre-cleared locations and pre-cleared types of critical infrastructure projects in lie of further permitting such projects
▶ 0:27:07would still have to comply with substantive environmental regulations and any non-compliance would still remain subject to enforcement these pre-cleared locations would include areas that federal state and Tribal Law have already prioritized such as brownfields opportunity zones energy communities shipyards and existing rights of way the third delay factor of course is NEPA and its state equivalence the solution is to refocus NEPA reviews on unquantified
▶ 0:27:37environmental impacts as the original 1970 law provides since 1970 hundreds of federal state local and tribal laws have been enacted all of which quantify most every environmental impact in thousands of implementing regulations and Technical documents Congress should clarify that any environmental impacts that are regulated or managed under another law do not require redundant analysis and evaluation under NEPA we still get full coverage but
▶ 0:28:07we eliminate the redundancy finally new infrastructure faces a five-year delay and a massive backlog preventing connection to the electricity grid imagine if that was your home your school or your hospital five years before you can connect to the grid Congress should set a six-month limit on interconnection decisions and direct the firk and doe to work with system operators to implement automated Technology Solutions with three years we have the hardware
▶ 0:28:37we have the software we just need to invest to make it happen with these initiatives brownfields can happen starting tomorrow and we can move from thousands of sites redeveloped to hundreds of thousands of sites redeveloped and it will be the foundation of the future of our economy thank you for your consideration and I look forward to your questions thank you sir now recognize Mr boliage Mayor for your five minute opening or opening statement thank you very much
▶ 0:29:07Mr chairman Griffith I appreciate it ranking member TOMCO it's good to see you again and thank you very much Congressman Menendez and Congressman palone for your kind words um I've been before this committee chairman numerous times since the 1990s on the topic of brownfields and I represent the US Conference of Mayors but I'd like the committee to know that we're also working closely with the national league of cities and the National Association of counties on this important issue I also want to thank this committee for incorporating
▶ 0:29:38our recommendations into the brownfields law in 2018 including the multi-purpose grants the increasing of the cleanup Grant amounts and we are very pleased at that time to see additional funding of$ 1.5 billion doll uh that and higher funding caps that were included in infrastructure invest investment and jobs act uh previous testimony cities have been doing brownfields as all of you know for years but we've hit roadblocks on
▶ 0:30:08those efforts and the legislation that you mentioned in your opening remarks chairman in 202 was a GameChanger on many of those roadblocks providing liability protections for innocent parties codified the brownfields program made a difference uh throughout many communities in this entire country the results are impressive for every Federal dollar that are awarded in this brownfields program $20 45 cents has been leveraged
▶ 0:30:3913.9 jobs were leveraged uh per $100,000 of EPA funding the only downside as you know Mr chairman and members of this committee are that the grant applications far outnumber the resources that are available and although many of the easier to develop Brown field sites have been tackled communities still struggle to develop more difficult sites the changes that were Incorporated in 2018 reauthorization bill
▶ 0:31:09as well as the jobs act have assisted with cleanup and Redevelopment of more complex sites EPA brownfields has consistently one of the most useful Federal programs at the local level and it's a bipartisan program supported by Congress Brown fails are are a neighborhood I saw that the neighborhood sees but for cities they represent unutilized potential we see Redevelopment as a chance to create jobs
▶ 0:31:39Revitalize neighborhoods increase the daak space and reutilize existing infrastructure I want to thank Congress for the including 1.5 billion in brownfields Redevelopment in the job acts as well as providing higher Grant levels EPA was hesitant to towards larger grants because they only had $90 million however with the increased funding and additional flexibility EPA provided larger Grant amounts of $500,000 for
▶ 0:32:09assessments and 5 million for cleanups in my community uh We've developed the Jersey Gardens uh the harbor front Villas Elizabeth Port Hope 6 and they're all included in my written testimony the former landfill became a 200 acre shopping experience a former indust or Waterfront is new home to mixed use development that includes luxury homes as well as affordable housing this is what the great ground field the the brownfields program is all about
▶ 0:32:40each Community is different they have their own needs and their own vision and the program provides them with the tools they need regarding the next reauthorization bill we would like to recommend on behalf of the conference of Mayors naturally additional levels of funding of $250 to 300 million per year for the next 5 years multi-purpose Grant programs increasing the grant amounts to 5 to 10 million we would also ask the EPA to allow the broadest
▶ 0:33:10application of the area to cover these grants support of our original recommendation of increasing the cleanup uh Grant cap to 1 million with the flexibility to go up to 10 million in certain instances raise the administrative caps to a higher level this will help smaller communities and finally we'd like to work with you to develop recommendations on potential tools that can be implemented the changes that Congress has made in the last reauthorization bill improved
▶ 0:33:40the program and significantly the jobs act built on that progress our organizations are asking Congress for a simple reauthorization package with change in the effective dates but if possible we ask for additional resources such as those that were allocated in the jobs act this is a program that I think all of us are proud of out whatever side of the aisle and I urge this committee for reauthorization thank you Mr chairman for this opportunity I thank
▶ 0:34:10the gentleman and now recognize Miss stonum for five minute opening statement chairman Griffith ranking member tonco and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to testify today as chief executive officer and president of the Houston Land Bank America largest Geographic Land Bank our mission as a quasi governmental nonprofit is to turn vacant abandoned and underutilized properties into thriving Community assets however I also serve as a steering committee
▶ 0:34:40member for the National brownfields Coalition and a board member for the center for Community progress both organizations dedicated to ensuring that brownfields are opportunities for redevelopment and economic progress as the energy capital of the world Houston is on track to become the Third largest city in the United States yet hundreds of brownfields and Acres remain barriers to housing jobs and economic Prosperity but unlike many major cities Houston has no zoning laws
▶ 0:35:10meaning that industrial sites often sit directly next to homes schools and community centers this creates health and safety risks drives down poerty values and makes Redevelopment complicated especially when absentee landlords legal barriers and contamin cost prevent private investment from stepping in but that's where land Banks step up we take on the toughest properties the ones that market won't touch and position them for community-driven revitalization
▶ 0:35:41but we can't do this work alone one example of federal support in action is Project Yellow Cab a 6.8 acre Brownfield site in Houston's near North Side once a vital Transportation Hub the former taxi headquarters quickly became an illegal lamb fill a crime hot spot and an environmental hazard but since 2019 the Houston landbank has secured 5 million in local government grants for site acquisition leveraged 7.3 million in arpa funds to gain full site control with Harris
▶ 0:36:11County demolished abandoned warehouses and prepared the land for redevelopment but most importantly we partnered with the community to plan 40 affordable single family homes and 120 affordable multif family units in addition we secured over $200,000 to ensure these homes are energy efficient and disaster ready a critical need in Houston where sto storms and hurricanes are a constant threat but project Yellow Cap is just one example of a bigger need to expand our as our impact we
▶ 0:36:41also secured a $600,000 assessment grant for over 40 acres to conduct infrastructure analysis facilitate reuse planning and to engage Community leaders environmental experts and policy makers to drive new funding and Partnerships today we're working with the $500,000 Citywide Brownfield assessment Grant and a $5 million cleanup Grant to transform a 60-year abandoned trash incinerator site into a public green space but without sustained Federal investment
▶ 0:37:11these projects and many like them may never happen land Banks across the country rely on governmental Partnerships to take on sites that private developers cannot do alone but we need continued success in order to align with Congress to ensure long-term funding stability expand eligibility for small community-driven projects strengthen public private Partnerships and expand reuse planning support because at Houston landbank we don't see brownfields as problems
▶ 0:37:41we see them as possibilities homes where families can build wealth parks where children can play and storefronts where B businesses can grow but this progress depends on sustained Federal investment Houston like so many cities cannot for to lose a single square foot of opportunity we have the tools we have the Partnerships we have the momentum now we need the resources to amplify our mission thank you for your time and service and attention I welcome any questions you
▶ 0:38:13have I thank you so much and now recognize Mr Miller for his five minute opening statement good morning chairman grith Vice chairman krenshaw ranking member tonco and ranking member palone thank you for the opportunity to speak today on the critical role of epa's Brownfield program in revitalizing rural Cal communities I represent voices from the communities of Southwest Virginia that have powered this nation for Generations
▶ 0:38:43towns built around coal mines processing plants and industries that once thrived but have since faced economic downturn and environmental challenges the brownfields program is a Lifeline for these communities it transer transforms once contaminated underutilized properties into productive sites for economic development public use and Community restoration the program just does not just clean up land it restores hope
▶ 0:39:14attracts investment and paves the way for a new economic future one of the most significant benefits of the brownfields program is its role in Economic Development rural coal impacted communities often struggle to attract new businesses due to environmental concerns T to tied to former Mining and Industrial sites brownfields funding changes that equation by assessing and remediating contamination these sites often
▶ 0:39:44the only developable flat acreage in a locality of very mountainous and slope terrain become viable locations for manufacturers small businesses and even a plethora of possible renewable energy and data center projects we've seen direct results for every Federal dollar invested in brownfields cleanup communi see an average return of $20 in Economic Development activity also it is estimated that brownfields Redevelopment
▶ 0:40:14creates over 10 jobs per $100,000 spent jobs that stay in the community and provide opportunities for displaced coal workers and younger Generations alike Beyond job creation brownfields funding enables rural communities to repurpose land for critical infrastructure projects many former coal related sites are being transformed into modern industrial parks and it is our hope future housing developments to meet growing Community
▶ 0:40:44needs without this Federal support many of these sites would remain abandoned limiting the Region's ability to attract new res residents industry and businesses the brownfields program is not is not just about industrial economic growth it's also about promoting the Resurgence of downtown communities many downtown districts Brownfield sites contain Legacy contaminants that pose risks brownfields funding allows localities to clean up these sites
▶ 0:41:15and create Prime locations for downtown district Resurgence further improving the live livability and quality of life in these communities many rural dependent communities are seeking ways to diversify their economies while maintaining their identity brownfields funding is playing a critical role in repurposing former Min land and Industrial sites for new energy data center development including battery storage facilities and even small modular reactor
▶ 0:41:45possibilities to meet ever growing domestic data center development power needs I'm thankful for chairman Griffith as well as governor yunan for making SMR and energy gener generation priority in our region Lena whis the agency I work for completed an SMR site feasibility study and identified seven possible sites six of those seven were Brownfield locations I also would note all seven of those locations scored very high
▶ 0:42:15in the sighting tool for advanced nuclear development the stand requirement these projects align with federal and state goals for energy security while ensuring that rural area remain key players in America's emerging data center in Energy Future the epa's Brownfield program is one of the most successful examples for federal investment sparking local revitalization it empowers rural communities to turn environmental Li liabilities into economic
▶ 0:42:46Assets in my experience when a former coal site is cleaned up and put back into productive use it does more than remove contamination it restores local price creates Economic Opportunity and provides a pathway for the Next Generation to stay and thrive in their hometowns I urge this committee to continue its support for the brownfields program ensuring that rural coal impacted communities have the resources needed to reclaim their land rebuild their economies
▶ 0:43:17and create a more sustainable future thank you and I look forward to your questions thank you very much and I thank all of our Witnesses we will now begin questioning by the members I I would ask that members remember not to ask a new question uh to our Witnesses just as your five minutes is expiring uh we do have yeah that happens we do have the opportunity for you to submit written questions for the record uh subsequent to the hearing and I would encourage you to
▶ 0:43:47do so uh that being said I will now recognize myself for five minutes Mr Miller Dwayne as you know I represent a large District it's larger than 9 states by land mass and so while today we're focusing on Len Wesco and and the southwest corner with the mines and so forth of the district uh I have brownfields in all of the 28 different geopolitical subdivisions that I represent from Martinsville to Pennington Gap and Lee County which which is part of your service area
▶ 0:44:17and uh it's from those two locations it's about 220 miles no matter where you are in the district get from one side to the other it's about four hours and and so many minutes depending on exactly where you're located uh so I don't want to it's not that we're ignoring them it's just that I couldn't focus on everybody uh but I am proud to have you here talking about the work that you have done in the lisco area uh could you talk more about how your organization has successfully utilized the brownfields grant program in our part of
▶ 0:44:47Virginia and I know in your testimony you mentioned project intersection so you may want to get into that Mike Sure Mr chairman yes project intersection actually uh is on a Brownfield site in the city of Norton in Virginia as the chairman mentioned I would say probably 80% of any acreage we have in in the district where I work uh that is more than five to 10 acres is going to be some form of a Brownfield site if
▶ 0:45:17it if it's something that can't be developed it's because of the slope or the mountainous terrain that that's in the region where we are uh project intersection was an abandoned Mand site and we were able to develop those 200 acres into a Industrial Park just over the Last 5 Years utilizing Brownfield money for assessment in the early stages and then able to turn those funds into uh amler funding through osm and amler is abandoned mindand economic revitalization that's a separate program from your
▶ 0:45:47traditional abandoned mindand program correct correct all right and it's a wonderful program yeah we we we've certainly utilized that program and secured over 30 million dollar to develop that industrial park and also have recruited two prospects that at full capacity will have 350 jobs within our region 350 jobs may not sound like a whole lot to some of the members or members of the committee here but 350 jobs in our region is what we like to refer to as a Big Lick
▶ 0:46:17so uh we're really happy to be able to do that and and you couldn't have done that without several programs but particularly also brownfields program is that correct absolutely there there's really no development we can do whether it's in downtown districts or larger Economic Development projects within our region without reaching into the Brownfield pot in one form or another whether it's an assessment or actual implementation all right can you tell us what barriers if any
▶ 0:46:47your organization has faced in receiving and making use of cleanup grants and revolving Loan Fund grants the biggest issue and what I would like like to leave with you all today in terms of that is is what can we do for redevelopment the the the Brownfield money is wonderful for assessment it's also wonderful for cleanup but in rural small areas like where we are with an aging population and of course a dropping tax bases with that older uh uh demographic is where can we find
▶ 0:47:18the funds for redevelopment I mean we struggle to find the funds just for the assessment and what we've had to do is pull a lot of our localities together go to EPA for a collaboration fund Grant and then use those funds because our communities you remember some of our towns I'm fortunate to work for for 15 towns one city and Three Counties and we have actually the smallest town in the Commonwealth of Virginia Duffield which has 50 residents uh going up to our largest town of those 15 which is
▶ 0:47:48about 3,500 so very rural small area so you know we we will get I kind of like I won't use an analogy but we we really don't have the the funds in our small localities to really get past we'll do we'll do you know the assessment and then we'll get into the cleanup on implementation but there's really nothing to go that next step uh in Redevelopment I'm not asking for EPA and brownfields
▶ 0:48:18to fund all of that but maybe some type of matching program where you could access some of those funds in in the form of a grant for Redevelopment of some of those areas and again not not 100% by any means but at least something uh that we could could do and I'd be a Miss if I didn't plug too I certainly anything we could do that would help uh specifically coal Reliant communities I I think would would be wonderful I appreciate that and you mentioned Duffield and I'm out of time so I'll just say that Duffield has a lot of brown sites Brownfield
▶ 0:48:49sites even though it only is a town of how many people did you say there's 50 in Duffield all right I appreciate it went from 54 to 50 in the last s uh yield back and now recognize Mr tono ranking member for his five minutes of questions thank you Mr chair and thank you to the witnesses again I absolutely want this program to be able to continue working and working effectively and after the enactment of the infrastructure investment and jobs act we have some new data points that Congress might want to consider for adjusting the program moving forward
▶ 0:49:19so mayor Bo do you and the local government groups you are representing believe that those iig funds have been used to effectively when we can get him yes and Miss Stone do you or any of the other Witnesses share the view that the iiga has resulted in federal dollars being utilized absolutely it provided an opportunity to work directly with the communities to imagine what they would like to see and then directly implement the solution as well okay anyone else on
▶ 0:49:51that uh those iig dollars included some tweaks to the program's requirements May B I know you have made the point that many of the easier brownfields have already been addressed through the program which has left sites that are more complex costly or otherwise less attractive for redevelopment but of course those sites also deserve the chance to spark a locally driven revitalization effort those I dollars sought to address this by increasing the maximum award amount so Mr Mayor was this an effective
▶ 0:50:21policy change to better address more complex sites yes Mr uh Vice chairman um ranking member it helps in a way that it fors flexibility for the municipalities and that's the important part of that question thank you and did EPA strike the right balance between award amounts and the overall number of awards depends on the municipality it could it could work the the balance uh in my city it's always worked and do other Witnesses have an opinion
▶ 0:50:52on the merits of larger award amounts Mr econ um yeah ranking me member tonko the projects I've been F I'm focused on are these big innovation infrastructure projects which tend to be larger and be have a much more complex physical infrastructure but then have all these spillover effects into then the smaller Brown fields that will support them and Supply them so think of building submarines in Mobile Alabama you have the big Redevelopment that occurs just at the facility for building
▶ 0:51:22but then you have all these zones around the shipyard that can now be restored and redeveloped so it's it's a combination of anchor and then lots of lots of smaller supporting and now you can have a systematic Redevelopment that brings lots of value to the community thank you um the bipartisan brownfields reauthorization that was recently marked up by the senate epw committee also included a statutory increase to the maximum award amount and while the Senate hasn't gone as far as the I's maximum Awards the inclusion of this
▶ 0:51:53provision is an acknowledgement that some future sites may require additional flexibility in the size of awards um mayor B bage based on the iig experience is this a change we should consider in the program's reauthorization we we believe the new money that's being provided by the jobs Act is uh utilize and justify the Appropriations in the future uh higher funding levels are naturally extremely important and could be included in this new authorization Bill thank you
▶ 0:52:23for that and from our other Witnesses any comments on uh on that effort being made I I would have to to agree and anything we could do to raise the amount and one of the things again I'm in a very rural location you know so some of our projects may be as simple as Redevelopment of an old school building not a high cost in terms of the grand scheme of things but then we're also focusing now and really trying to take some of this rural property that's in
▶ 0:52:53a remote area and Market it for data centers and also small modular reactors and looking at other energy projects and as most of you all know when when you're talking about data centers or small modular reactors you're talking about huge price tags so anything we could do to increase uh uh I think we would certainly ask okay Miss tonum I think you wanted to say something too yes the $5 million cleanup grant for the trash incinerator that I mentioned was the largest in our region if we had more dollars we could
▶ 0:53:23have considered additional uses outside of a green space considering the site currently has over 40t of incinerator Ash currently on that site so if we had a larger funding amount then maybe we can incorporate other community benefits but we were very grateful to receive that Grant award to produce that result okay with seconds remaining I heard the chair earlier today so with that I'll yield back how's that for p absolutely I thank the gentleman and now recognize Mr kensaw for his
▶ 0:53:53five minutes and questions thank you Mr chair I thank go for being here uh thank you Miss stonum for being here and and telling us about some of these successful Brownfield site cleanups in our hometown of Houston um before I get to Mr conon on a few other questions on on some of these Houston based projects um you know in your testimony you stated that the initial Brownfield uh uh
▶ 0:54:23Grant of I think $600,000 opened up 13 million dollars but those but but I when we look at those those are also mostly EPA more mostly Federal funding that it opened up where is where does the state come in in in projects like these um I saw some from City of Houston uh does the what's the state agency that would that would that would be matching or or cost sharing so currently we have not had any matches match requirements or received any direct funds from the state now we did coordinate with the
▶ 0:54:53tcq in terms of the compliance and the reporting the testing but we did not receive any funding as of yet okay I was just curious thank you um Mr conon uh you mentioned many ways to make this just a more efficient process in general could you maybe elaborate on that and um ways to increase private investment interest in Brownfield sites and and also this the the efficiency um of the program uh and permitting and just getting it getting it going we we keep hearing this this stuff
▶ 0:55:23in terms of years uh how do we make those months yeah so um many of the projects that have been in the program are are smaller U more located near cities rebuilding communities and this you know we're talking about grants in the 1 to 10 million um what I want to talk about is the opposite of funding uh th these those are what I call assess to attract so you're funding to clear the site so hopefully somebody will develop it in the future what I want to talk about is attract
▶ 0:55:54to assess where there's not an outlay of money the main um obstacle to building out large Innovation infrastructure and I have lived it and have have the successes of the scars to prove it the main obstacle is speed to project completion so if I know I'm going to build a $200 million data center project which I have done and I know that I can actually turn it on in under two years which is impossible I'll pay anything to assess the site to make it clean
▶ 0:56:24for redevelopment okay that would be my budget but if I'm looking at a Brownfield and it's I'm not sure if it's an assessment status and I don't know I can get my permits and I don't know what I can build my project is going to cost two to three times more right I'm gonna have all this uncertainty and I'm not going to get my investors or my insurers to sign off so the biggest risk to Brown for redevelopment are all the projects that never get built that we don't talk about okay because they die on the vine that's why these pering reforms are so vital
▶ 0:56:54and I want to underline I'm not talking about changing any environmental standards I'm just talking about reversing the process step like we do in most other sectors which is let's let developers with their thirdparty experts actually build and be subject to an enforcement enforcement for non-compliance which by the way in the Modern Age almost never happens now the rules are strict the enforcement's harsh uh you know you a huge damages liabilities so the beauty of rebuilding in Brownfield is you can take that Brownfield and turn
▶ 0:57:24it into an environmental Green Field and that's why you can support all these all these activities but you need this a three-legged stool and the three-legged stool is you've got to get the site assessments cleared fast okay I can pay my expert to do it in you know weeks actually months but then I sit around wait for a year and a half for the government clearance right I can do all my I can do all my NEPA I did a NEPA in California we did it in h three months and it took me three and a half years to get it signed off on I mean that's that's nuts and then the environmental permits once
▶ 0:57:55I was finally able to apply for them which I couldn't do till my NEPA was done okay that took another year all right you know my project is now three times more than it than it was very hard to especially as a startup to get investment so if we don't go after all of these pieces they run in parallel any one doesn't solve the problem is this when you testify about automatic signoff processes is that what you're talking about yeah we do that in so many other sectors you know where we have third party certified professionals signing off to government
▶ 0:58:25set standards and the Brownfield programming the mayor and others have created a 30-year record of how to do this right we know how to do it we have the practices we have the standards we know it's clean we know it's not clean the remediation methods are really well established so where all of this is well established we just we should just have a process where the professionals sign off and then they can be inspected and reviewed you know if they screw up but it almost never happens anymore got it thank you that's a an interesting thing for the committee to think about as we look at reauthorization
▶ 0:58:55yield back thanks gentlemen for yielding back now recognize Mr palone chair ranking member of the full committee for his five minutes questions thank you Mr chairman let me go to mayor bage in your testimony you say and I quote it will never be a bad investment to put more money into this program obviously I agree but as we start to think about reauthorizing brownfields what authorization levels should we consider for the program thank you Mr palone u i Rec I recommend
▶ 0:59:25that testimony that we do 300 million per year for the next 5 years and that the Caps are set at 10 million for cleanup multi-purpose and job training grants $500,000 for assessments is what's in my written testimony all right thank you and um I mean the bipartison infrastructure law had 1.5 billion that was a big boost to the program and you know I don't want to slow down that momentum because Brownfield sites are getting harder to remediate and clean up so I think the authorization
▶ 0:59:56a levels need to reflect that if you will but let me go to miss Stoneham from your perspective how important is it for Congress to reauthorize the brownfields program and particularly for the planning of important projects that are in the pipeline absolutely thank you for that question so for the ReUse planning aspect of Brownfield assessment that's one of the first lines of implementation of just being able to have a feasibility study to have the ReUse planning and then of course obviously doing
▶ 1:00:26the phase one and phase two testing so having additional Appropriations so we can figure out what not just what the vision is but do they also match the performa analysis of whatever development is timeing trying to take place would be extremely helpful so we can move forward with additional money needed for the capital stack as we are partnering with the public nonprofit and private sectors did you want to add anything to that mayor about um the planning of projects and the pipeline and Brownfield I agree with
▶ 1:00:56my colleague over here I mean as you know congressman and on both sides of me when we did the Jersey Gardens Mall getting the money and the reassessments under brownfields was relatively easy then getting sign off became much more difficult and so I would only add that part to the uh to the answer to the question okay um you know obviously to provides certainty for local and private sector Investments we have to ensure the program is reauthorized in a timely manner as well um I'm going to
▶ 1:01:26ask both of you the mayor and Miss Stoneham the next question um has the Trump administration's illegal funding freeze impacted the development and operation of your brownfields projects and and how so I'll start with the mayor if you will so we have a $500,000 Grant under the jobs act for brownfields for job training and it was held up two weeks ago or a month ago we're
▶ 1:01:56waiting we can't even get a hold of anybody to talk to them and just recently I was told on a train on the way here this morning that we would know an answer in the next two weeks and that's a tough way to deal with a grant that you got now keep in mind the groundworks association and Elizabeth has put in a lot of upfront effort when it comes to Dollars and training for this and now they're being told you can't access to
▶ 1:02:26money well I I first of all let me say I learned a lot on the train back to New Jersey as well mayor but um you see this is the problem um we had the the freeze the court said you can't freeze the money but what I find more and more is that even though in theory the Trump Administration has recognized that they can't freeze this money not just for brownfields but for so many other things that
▶ 1:02:57practically speaking in many cases this freeze continues only because there's nobody to uh to send out the money the portal doesn't work you know whatever it happens to be so let me ask Miss uh I I would just I would just add to you Mr Congressman that if you don't answer the phone on the other end yeah I mean that's the problem so you got 50 if can I add Mr if you wanted to add to that Miss stona yes so it significantly impacted our timeline planning of what we need needed for the procurements for the
▶ 1:03:27cleanup grant for 5 million that I mentioned earlier um definitely just having the risk of us being a nonprofit and this being a reimbursement Grant don't feel comfortable even publishing it not knowing if we'll have the opportunity to pay our contractors so we needed to meet the compliance measures obviously of this particular Grant but we also have other people that we have to report out to including the community the local government um so definitely the the instability makes it difficult in order for us to enact the development
▶ 1:03:57that we said we were going to do well thank you thank you Mr chairman i y back the gentleman Ys back the chair now recognizes the chair of the full committee representative Guthrie for five minutes thank you thank you thanks to all the witnesses for being here last year Congress passed the advance act which required the nuclear Regulatory Commission or NRC NRC to modernize its efforts to develop domestic Advanced nuclear energy
▶ 1:04:28the advance act uh the bra included the nuclear for Brownfield sites preparation act which directed The NRC to identify and report on regulations guidance or policy necessary to license and allow nuclear facilities at Brownfield sites as well as other sites with retired fossil fuel facilities so Mr canon in your testimony you discussed the need to quote deliver on the proving promise of Brownfield driven industrial Innovation unquote which requires
▶ 1:04:58quote a significant modernization of governmental approval processes for site assessment permitting and interconnecting end quote so Mr Canon could you discuss in your view what improvements to the brownfields program could be made to deliver on that promise thank you Mr chairman um and let's let's start with nuclear the key for nuclear is this stringent in um safety regulations that the NRC is entrusted to implement to be sure these projects are built um in a in in the manner historically that's been proven to be quite safe
▶ 1:05:28for our communities and providing tons of zero emission power um that is the critical path to making these projects work if you think about the billions of dollars that go into these projects environmental comp compliance is a necessity and the work of certified professionals lawyers Engineers biologists what have is conducted by the project proponent okay to the meeting so that they meet the highest standards before they ever go to talk to a if we can have Brownfield sites assessed and ready to
▶ 1:05:58go and you have these new more modular Construction in particular but also conventional um and we had a system where you actually built and submitted your paperwork demonstrating compliance okay if you would if we could just allow the project to get built okay we we'd cut the cost by 2third and that all that's a direct pass through to Consumers uh it lowers your cost of capital for investment it means we can have three times more for the same price uh for communities uh brownfields are great for that
▶ 1:06:28in in the appropriate NRC identified location so sighting is critical you still want to 100% defer to local concerns and interests on the sighting process but the permitting process and connecting to grid if we don't fix it we're not going to get it thank you appreciate that so mayor mayor B bage um as I said I spent a lot of time in the New York New Jersey border there so it's beautiful town that you have in a beautiful area so I just want to say so
▶ 1:06:58in your testimony you note that quote additional tools may be necessary to convince owners of mothball properties that it's safe to turn over or sell or redevelop those properties would you talk about what tools you suggest would be necessary or may be necessary well one of the tools that we have locally would be eminent domain in order to take the property and that creates the liability issue uh on who's going to be responsible if the city takes it over the other tool tools would be Financial incentives uh in order to
▶ 1:07:29attract the developer whether it be through local tax abatements or through other tax incentives uh tools that this committee or the Congress could give us would naturally be more dollars moving towards the Redevelopment process thank you and then so Mr Canen um in your testimony you asked rhetorically shouldn't we be doing more to put Brownfield sites back to work with r new deployment of modern largescale industrial Innovations do you want to kind of expand
▶ 1:07:59on that and then maybe also Mr B mayor and and Mr Miller as well want to expand on that in the decades following World War II we built this massive physical footprint for the massive industrialization that unfolded and then we've basically you know given most of it away uh to you know o overseas and moving into more of a Services um and small Tech based economy um now we are facing we're paying the price for that which is now we got to rebuild it all and the Brownfield footprint is there it's efficient it's got communities
▶ 1:08:29it's got all the amenities uh it's got the schools the churches so putting those communities back to work in the new modern form of infrastructure is an opportunity we just we have to go after okay thanks I'm mayor I had you answer questions I'll just skip over it because I'm about Out Mr Miller is that uh shouldn't we be doing more to put brownfields back to work for the more large scale industrial you know expand on that in Innovations no no absolutely and and Mr Mr Mr chairman as I mentioned in my comments and kind of kind of switching
▶ 1:09:00but in terms of uh SMR feasibility site studies that we did in our region uh we identified seven possible sites six of those seven are in Brownfield areas and kind of to your point to some of the other committee members I mentioned six of those seven sites are on Brownfield sites and all seven sites scored above average on a nationwide average in the siding tool for advanced nuclear development or the stand uh criteria that's
▶ 1:09:30utilized for that so that kind of goes back to your point I mean about what we can do for for new types of projects uh and I'd love to talk to you more about this look forward to I am my time's expired so I will look forward to following up with you thank you gentleman yields back now recognize Miss chikowski for her five minutes of questioning thank you Mr chairman uh I want to ask uh questions just of um Miss stonum and uh Mr
▶ 1:10:00ball am I saying that right ball work um my my questions um of course deal with this issue of the uh you know what's going on in our communities and um it's so important that we have clean places for our children for our community for our uh Merchants to uh to to have and we know that
▶ 1:10:30in Illinois seven uh of the um uh counties uh definitely have uh places that need to be cleaned up and have not been uh so far but I wanted to uh raise the question that seems to uh defer the ability or could defer the ability to clean up
▶ 1:11:01uh and one of them an important one that we see right now is that there are U monies that are being taken away now uh and uh that there's going to be fewer amount less amount of money to be able to clean up um these uh Brown Fields um and I'm just wondering how
▶ 1:11:31you see the uh problem that uh is going to be emerging when the money is not available to do the uh to do the cleanup and I mentioned the two people I'm hoping would answer that so definitely not having the funding we need especially with Houston and the significant
▶ 1:12:01amount of brownfields throughout the city and across our nation would have an economic decline um I strongly believe in public private partnership and it's just too much for a private investor to take on solely on their own especially with all of the compliance measures that need to take place and having those funds will ensure the stability to have Contin contiguous tra change for the different developments needed across our nation whether it's housing or green space
▶ 1:12:32or solar activity really just having that consistency is absolutely necessary in addition to the staff needed to make sure that the paperwork and the compliance measures are moving forward accordingly as well well I I really feel um concerned that people who have been doing this work um that the money is uh is shrinking that it's been taken away um through the Trump Administration and I am just
▶ 1:13:02concerned that who's going to be able to have the money if the people who are working on these projects are out of a job I strongly agree and Echo your sentiments as well well we have to watch that the when when there are dollars being being taken um away because uh then you know we we need to have all the resources
▶ 1:13:33that we have in uh in our communities um we know in the Chicago area itself this is a real problem um and I'm wondering um if um um Mr let me get the name right um bull B wage yeah okay thank you uh many communities are still going to do the easy ones
▶ 1:14:03they're still going to do the ones that are simple and the brown fields and you know Congress recognized this in 2018 in the reauthorization bill uh raising the cleanup grants to $200 to $500,000 with the flexibility to go up $650,000 based on the anticipated level contamination um but in answering your question we also need people in the EPA to answer the phones thank you so much I yel
▶ 1:14:34back G lady yields back now recognize Mr L for five minutes of questioning well thank you Mr chairman and thanks very much for our Witnesses for being with us today it's a very important topic and um if I could uh Mr can and if I could uh ask you because I men I'm sorry you had to step out for a couple of meetings but you mentioned something that's kind of near and dear to everybody's heart is that as we're watching what's happening today with data centers going up across the country and there's a
▶ 1:15:04real question of you know where where they're being placed where you know in the amount of space that's needed for them and I I just like to get your opinion as to what what do what do you see the what we could be doing on brownfields and data centers because this is this is absolutely a massive need that we're going to be having in this country not just the massive amount of power we're going to have to have but just the sighting in some of the issues we have there yeah just to put things in perspective
▶ 1:15:34if we were sitting here 10 years ago a five megawatt data center would be big uh and then very quickly it was 20 megawatts uh just two years ago 100 megawatts was a gigantic data center um we are involved uh my former company I worked with Nautilus Technologies we're involved in a project that a Coal Fired old Coal Fired power plant that shut down in Portugal 1.2 gaw so 1200 megawatt of power that that data center will use and in America
▶ 1:16:04you're seeing these 250 500 megawatt projects that want to be built and can't find the places that they can build to get access to the power or the time to be able to build their own power uh in anything that represents you know the the the demand I describe this as we need to build at the speed of the need uh and we've got too many obstacles to getting there uh the thing I want to underline is these data centers are essential to
▶ 1:16:34our daily lives and the beauty is they're out of sight you know and they're in big warehouses uh but they don't clutter our world they don't clutter our world Our World shows up like this and so they're really really valuable pieces of infrastructure and then of course with AI um they're going to be defining the you know the industrial um you know the fourth Industrial Revolution and America kind of owns that right now we could give it up Ireland for example has no process for citing any new data centers of any size they just killed the
▶ 1:17:04goose that laid the golden egg Ireland was a hub for information technology companies and it's over in Ireland I do not want to see that happen here okay we have the ability these Brown fields to make these data centers problem is you know if we look about um what we always talk about in this committee hopefully we're going to get something done in this Congress like on permitting to be able to you know get in into these Brown fields and say you know what it's safe to put these in and so uh what do you see on the permitting side what do we need to be doing on permitting to move things along get things
▶ 1:17:34along faster said and I've never you know great thing about this committee the broad jurisdiction we have I've never heard anybody ever testified before saying that they're against our regulations just give us regulations we can live with but what do you see on the permitting side that that we ought to be doing right now you what's interesting we had all the big infrastructure projects data centers semiconductors by the way even ship building today they actually don't have a big outward environmental footprint there's a lot of things to comply with okay but all the methods of controlling to prevent
▶ 1:18:05environmental contamination are are you know are well known and in place and so if we could simply change the default to yes with inspection and enforcement of non-compliance which almost never occurs that solves the problem and you do it in site assessment you do it in permitting and you do it with interconnection you have to create an automated system uh we live in a modern age uh when I got in my car this morning I did not call the police to get permission to leave my home promising I would comp you know I'm certified I have my license I have my insurance
▶ 1:18:36I'm I'm trusted to comply and if I don't comply they come they come and get me uh we should be doing the same for our infrastructure Builders because they're really skilled and they spend you know we're talking about billion dollar projects 10 billion dollar projects you know we're in a whole new world in America you know putting in physical infrastructure again we've got to we've got to match match that opportunity well in my last 45 seconds yeah let me ask this because again when you're talking about going to brownfields especially you're going to let's say coof fire plants what's what is
▶ 1:19:06the real the difficulty for saying I'm going to go into that uh facility to put that data center in there where these plants want to be there only have about 28 seconds left um state or federal environmental review process which is four to five years um and a parallel or overlapping state and federal permitting process uh which causes me to have to know that I can't build and complete anything in less than eight or 10 years there's some exceptions to that by the way and they're really good like in Memphis uh the
▶ 1:19:36big AI data center there was built in six months with just six months of of they had a lot of support six months of clearances they've set the Benchmark we should be able to do this in a year if Memphis can do it in a year the rest of the country should be able to do it in a year well thank you very much my time has expired I'll give the balance of my questions uh written to our uh Witnesses thank you Mr chairman gentleman yields back now recognize Dr Ruiz for his five minutes of questions thank you Mr chairman uh today's topic is about the critical
▶ 1:20:07importance of the brownsfield program and its impact on communities across the country as we all know the brownsfield program provides funding and resources to clean up and redevelop contaminated sites transforming them into safe usable spaces that drive economic growth and restoration uh there is bipartisan consensus that the brownsfield program is essential for Community revitalization cleaning up contaminated sites
▶ 1:20:37and transforming them into economic engines benefits everyone businesses workers and families Across America the Environmental Protection agencies brownfields program is a proven Solution by providing grants and resources to assess clean up and and Revitalize these sites we can turn blighted polluted lands into thriving Community spaces whether it's new housing small businesses or parks and since the program's Inception
▶ 1:21:07it has helped create hundreds of thousands of jobs and leverage billions in private investment Nationwide Mr bolw could you share how does the Brownsville program contribute to local economies particularly in terms of job creation and attracting private investment so we had a former landfill in the city of Elizabeth of almost 200 Acres we transformed that with uh an initial uh Grant of assessment into a mall that's about
▶ 1:21:37200 stores 2 million square feet four hotels on the waterfront providing uh providing hundreds of Jobs Plus 5,000 construction jobs that site $63,000 a year to the city Elizabeth and now with State incentives and others it generates over $7 million a year to the city of Elizabeth that's incredible in my district uh we see firsthand the consequences of abandoned contaminated
▶ 1:22:08properties sites that once held promise but have instead become environmental and economic burdens and these Brownfield sites many of which are former formal former industrial facilities gas stations or landfills pose risks to Public Health Drive down property value and limit economic development in already underserved communities for example in 2019 the city of Broly facilitated the sale and Redevelopment of the lasa property once
▶ 1:22:38an unusable contaminated site as you see in this photo that sat vacant for years and was a hardship on the community and thanks to the epa's Brownfield remediation efforts that property has been transformed into a thrive driving car repair shop not only that not only improves the area's appearance but also provides good paying jobs and brings economic activity to the district so this is a perfect example of how Strategic investment in brownfields
▶ 1:23:09cleanup leads to real tangible benefits for our communities uh Miss Stoneham how does Brownfield Redevelopment contribute to broader environmental and sustain sustainability goals such as reducing urban sprawl and promoting green absolutely with the project Yellow Cab case study that I mentioned earlier just that being in the urban core and producing an urban typology for the single family homes is providing an opportunity for people
▶ 1:23:39to live work and play but also Additionally the trash incinerator site which is transforming into a green space connects to a bigger BYU master plan of um how affordable housing and just being able to walk on the the Bayou and the different environmental measures and uh preservation components that we are evaluating as well thank you you know we must remember that this is also about Community investment too often historically underserved neighborhoods like those
▶ 1:24:09in my district face the greatest challenges from contamination and neglect the epa's brownfields program helps Revitalize these areas by driving Redevelopment creating jobs and bringing much needed economic opportunities to the communities that need them the most oh wait did I say bringing much needed economic opportunities to the communities that need them the most that's Equity that's equity and Rural communities like those from my Republican colleagues on the other side need these funds just
▶ 1:24:39as well that's why we must continue supporting these programs investing in Brownfield remediation is not just about cleaning up land it's about building healthier communities creating jobs and ensuring that all Americans no matter their zip code have access to clean air safe water and Economic Opportunity that's why I urge my colleagues to join me in strengthening and fully funding the Browns Fields Program and the EPA staff who make this program work so we can continue turning environmental liabilities
▶ 1:25:09into safe economic opportunities for families across the country I yield back I thank the gentleman for yielding back I noticed that we have a group of students who have joined us this is the environment subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee we welcome you here today we are discussing brownfields and we have four experts from across the country who are giving us different ideas uh we anticipate that this will occur that we will will uh reauthorize the brownfields program but perhaps with some suggestions that
▶ 1:25:39our Witnesses have brought to our attention with that I now recognize Mr Carter of Georgia for his five minutes of questions well thank you Mr chairman and thank each of you for being here and I'm glad the students are here too I hope you're learning a lot I know I am because brownfields are important brownfields we in fact we got over 450,000 brownfields here in the United States and every one of them represents a unique opportunity for us and I and and I hope that we take those opportunities and certainly what we're discussing today
▶ 1:26:10is important on this committee Energy and Commerce we talk a lot about energy needs we know that we're going to need more energy in the future and and our growing energy needs and and we also talk about the need for more businesses so we ought to be looking at brownfields as places where we can uh where we can grow M state of Georgia has over 50 major data centers and many of the brownfields have the potential to to house future data centers and for good reasons and a lot of these sites um have electrical
▶ 1:26:40existing power delivery infrastructure which is a common uh challenge for data centers Mr Conan let me ask you con has conon con conon perfect conon okay conon you're company specializes in uh creating data center related Technologies I've visited many data centers and they use a lot of energy a whole lot of energy um do you feel that brownfields represent an opportunity for building out more data centers in America yeah I
▶ 1:27:10I certainly do and I'll give you the example of my company Nautilus where we have invented an approach to cool data centers the same way you cool a cold fired power plant or an industrial processing facility and that's taking naturally cold water running through the data center and returning it unchanged just a little bit warmer uh back to the water body it came from that's how we do power plants industrial facilities it's how we cool ship engines so imagine all of these old thermal power plants the old these old manufacturing centers that already have that
▶ 1:27:40intake and and discharge infrastructure it's already been permitted in the past The Regulators know and understand what you know what what the Dynamics of this are they tend to be loc located close by the way to water treatment facilities and other big infrastructure so the workforce is there and the communities are familiar with and accept that kind of activity so we could uh you know immediately be repurposing these old energy centers and these old manufacturing centers if we if we were able to deal with permitting
▶ 1:28:11okay I I went to a site so how how is permitting holding you up tell me that so um so our technology results in a process that does not trigger any environmental controls or regulatory standards and yet in building that at a Brownfield at the Port of Stockton right which is a community that really would benefit from this investment um and even though our our state NEPA review it's called squa our state review we got through it nine months because we had no impacts we had no negative impacts it still
▶ 1:28:41took us three and a half years to get signed off on of the NEPA we then had to wait three and a half years yeah and then we had to wait to file all our regular environmental permits till that process was done okay because the permits don't want to get into their work until the NEP is done and then for them remember we had no environmental things nothing to regulate that's took still took a year for them to agree with us that there was nothing to regulate okay and in one case we still got additional requirements even though it wasn't required by law so
▶ 1:29:11that's the challenge that's just one example uh there are you know thousands of them out there all right well I want to get to two more things and and one of them Mr Miller um he just described an area I I think could help us these brownfields are in rural areas just as well as urban areas so this is an example where you could actually use the brownfields and and rural areas as well correct correct that's what we want to do we we actually in the I guess we refer to it as
▶ 1:29:41a green room back earlier we're talking and made sure we traded uh traded contact with one another to put focus on this I mean yes I mean rural areas should should really be you got water supply you got everything that you need right good good this sounds wi one thing that we do lack in some of our rural areas is the power supply for those data centers but yet again brownfields are also very attractable to Alternative types of energy whether it's small
▶ 1:30:11modular reactors micro hydrogen or any of those other types of forms that you could then you know use those for behind the meter power to these data centers okay all right Chairman's already warned us about asking questions with little time remaining but I want I I got to get to this because I represent the coast of Georgia two major seaports shipyards Mr Conan what what about the infrastructure um Shipyard how can we upgrade Shipyard infrastructure and the importance of building new classes of of vessels much of which will take place
▶ 1:30:41on Brownfield sites the locations are there we just need to say yes to building and we need to extend the opportunity Zone law to these infrastructure locations to bring in and leverage you know on on a you know 9 to1 or 20 to1 basis private sector Capital great great good well thank y'all very much this sounds like a win-win situation something we should all be interested in thank you Mr chairman and I'll yield back I thank the gentleman for yielding
▶ 1:31:13back yeah and I now yield for point of personal privilege to Mr tono I see our former colleague Congressman Butterfield is in the office audience and uh faithful member in the house and uh led a lot of good fights on the environment so uh good to see you congressman and uh always a pleasure to introduce you welcome welcome and we appreciate you being back and now recognize representative Peters for his five minutes
▶ 1:31:43a question thank you Mr chairman Mr Conan um a lot of us have expressed concern about the the delays and permitting for getting stuff built we've worked really hard on clean energy particular on this committee and even the B Administration recognized that last year they took some steps to expedite permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act or Nea for clean energy on Disturbed developed or lower conflict areas so we're all in this permit reform game I want to ask you about something a distinction you drew and your um your testimony about limiting
▶ 1:32:14the scope of Nea review to unquantified impacts can you tell me what that what that means versus Quantified what was an example of that yeah so if you take the original NEPA law read it second page it says the agency you know shall consider unquantified impacts because in 1970 we didn't have this modern body of environmental law so it was a good idea okay and I'm a big defender of NEPA by the way I think NEPA is important um but over over 50 years we now have environmental laws covering everything quantifying everything for example
▶ 1:32:44the Clean Water endangered species um you know uh uh you know dust you know you name it we have a law that covers it and then state and local laws that do that do do on a fine grain base at the local level and so all project developers have to comply with all of that and they do that's the great thing we should be celebrating that they do comply with it and so this idea for NEPA is um uh you know I had a 160 page NEPA document I had to do for my First Data Center and all I talked about was all the stuff the other agencies
▶ 1:33:14were going to regulate but I couldn't get to them till I got through my my my squet process and so this is this is my point it's redundant so what's the unquantified impact in that case you have the in other words you have the Clean Water Act that says you can release a certain amount of pollution but not over that amount without a permit so we we know that's covered what what is the unquantified impact you look at under Neo so what would be left is actually uniquely local circumstances like you know proximity to a to a to a school uh what kind of traffic flows there will be right there'll be a whole bunch of unregulated
▶ 1:33:45things that are of Social and environmental interest and concern and you want to you want to capture that which is what the you know what the idea originally was for NEPA and for the State versions of it so you'll have a you know I think you would have a much reduced NEPA document that would be highly relevant to what matters locally while still getting all the work done through the regulatory process a lot of people on my side of the AL Express concern that that would limit public input into these decisions so give me an example of why that's not a concern for one of these
▶ 1:34:15Quantified impacts you won't be analyzing under NEPA anymore so you would have a public comment related to the zoning of the site so that's the first and most important place so the the community speaks about site suitability through zoning okay and then we want you got to preserve that and that's good um if it's a federal project Federal lands or the stuff that FK sites then you have a national process for that in which there's extensive public provision for public engagement and they can sue so you still you also have the public being able to participate in lawsuits
▶ 1:34:46so that'll occur in the unquantified NEPA piece the community will participate in the development of the unquantified analysis so they'll have that and then with respect to the regulations there's you know six seven layers of public participation in the in the original legislation in the development of the regulation in the development of the standards in the permits that that are uh provided for the for those um for those activities and then um public participates in enforcement you can have citizen enforcement
▶ 1:35:16uh and they can participate in lawsuits so by a long shot NEPA is not the only point of public impact whether it's Quantified or un quantif well arguably it's actually the least important in terms of Environmental Compliance it's the most important in terms of local suitability right a lot of folks have also suggested that we don't need to change the process what we need to do is really staff up the agencies I know the bid administration led an effort to provide a billion dollars to do that and we that may be under some question is that an answer uh in this case or
▶ 1:35:46we have to have process reforms um no we have a gross mismatch between the scale of what we need to get done and the and the the the number of officials we have to to do it and it's a gross mismatch and there's no addition of staff that will change that here's let me tell you why let's just assume it's a 100,000 projects it's more like 200,000 let's assume it's 100,000 projects that's 100,000 projects each project developer is hiring lawyers environmental consultants and Engineers their Banker is doing a too and their insurance company's doing a too
▶ 1:36:16okay so that's a lot of professionals per project nine at a minimum to sign off on the project then it goes to the Federal local Regulators 5 to 25 permits okay uh times all the districts and States okay so you're you end up with sort of thousands of offices involved in doing all this permitting times a 100,000 projects each one of which then has another permit bundle for connecting to the grid and another permit bundle for doing digital connection so that's several hundred thousand revie um
▶ 1:36:47requirements that's millions of reviews we're not built as a nation to handle what we now want right right as a matter of process well I'm out of time I do appreciate all your work on on permitting and and helping us get back to building stuff again and Mr chairman thank you for the hearing I yield back gentleman yields back now recognize representative Joyce for his five minutes of questioning first I want to thank chairman Griffith for holding today's hearing on epa's brownfields program and the witnesses for joining us
▶ 1:37:18in Pennsylvania we are proud of our Industries the coal the steel and Allied industries that were mined and forged in our cities and in our towns sadly many of these Legacy Industries have fallen on hard times and gone out of business leaving behind land in need of environmental cleanup and communities with limited resources to invest in that Redevelopment this is where epa's brownfields program has been useful to ensure
▶ 1:37:48that these are areas that are not left behind and economic development can across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania counties like Cambria and Blair have used brownfields to leverage public and private funding to create family sustaining jobs this program is a great example of how instead of federal government getting in the way with burdensome regulations it can work with local stakeholders to Spur lasting Redevelopment I've
▶ 1:38:18seen how successful these efforts have been in my own hometown of Altuna Pennsylvania where a brown Brownfield Grant helped encourage downtown Redevelopment by jumpstarting investment in Johnstown brownfields funds were used to build the greater Johnstown High School another brownfields Grant in Johnstown redeveloped the Cambria Iron Works repurposing older industrial buildings into an area that can attract visitors and residents while creating opportunities
▶ 1:38:49for new manufacturing jobs in the last few years three new brownfields grants have been awarded in my district by the EPA two are in Western Pennsylvania in Cambry and Somerset counties and one in central Pennsylvania that helps capitalize a million dooll brownsfield revolving fund that covers Mifflin Perry and Juniata counties across my district I could go on and on about different success stories of local communities taking advantage of this
▶ 1:39:19program to bring their towns back to life mayor boage in your written testimony you discussed some of the benefits of the multi-purpose Brownfield grants created in 2018 reauthorization of the program you also noted that it would be helpful for cities to be able to use the funding for wider areas are there any limitations on the funding that make it challenging to redevelop cities or maximize the value of these properties and if so do you have any recommendations
▶ 1:39:50on how the EPA could be more helpful for economic Redevelopment well thank you Mr uh thank you Congressman the the first thing is that naturally resources and the maximum or the minimum amount of resources we'd like to use the multi-purpose grants uh continue we want to see it included in the reauthorization as well as the dollar amounts increase we would also like to ask the EPA to allow for the broadest application of the area to be covered by this
▶ 1:40:20part of the grant Mr canatan similarly do you have any suggestions for Congress or the EPA on how the current program could better facilitate a variety of uses on Brownfield sites or allow the applicants to redevelop properties with unique aspects and can you explain why all state holders need to have skin in the game thank you I think um as it mentioned previously we had this opportunity to take the big old sites and convert them into
▶ 1:40:50big new sites and in that instance you're going to be able to leverage a lot of private sector Capital as long as you can you know have them see the capital go into completing a project in a reasonable period of time that's why the per reform is necessary we have great programs like I mentioned the opportunity Zone law which is quite popular and doing well the big complaint with opportunity with opportunity zones is it's not going to build big infrastructure projects why because you have to put your money in in six months and a project has to be ready to go and the problem
▶ 1:41:20is there aren't big infrastructure projects ready to go if the and then you need the site to be designated as an opportunity Zone I think a lot of go Governors um did good designations but didn't think about these big industrial locations or shipyards so I really recommend doing another designation round under that law and I think you'll bring forward hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars of new private sector money and that's serious skin in the game Congressman Mr Miller have you or others in your organization identified any limitations on
▶ 1:41:50acceptable uses of brownfields funding or lack of flexibility with any of the funding streams with the federal brownfields program not necessarily with the funding streams but as much dealing with issues with the complexity of the application process itself for smaller rural areas and I mentioned in my opening comments you know we've had to pull resources together with our localities kind of with the approach stronger as a whole weaker as pieces and going in for those funds um
▶ 1:42:21other items strength and provision ISS for for Rural distressed cold communities and what we could do uh because again those localities I'm sure in your District as well struggle for funds not for any other reason than just because of their small size and I thank you for emphasizing the need in rural areas that is indeed my district Mr chairman my time has expired I yield back thank the gentleman for yielding back and now recognize representative Baragon for her five minutes of question uh thank you Mr chairman
▶ 1:42:52um and to our Witnesses for being here I appreciate the bipartisan support we have on this committee for the brownfields program at the Environmental Protection Agency however the epa's budget and the staff it needs to implement its programs are under attack from the Trump Administration uh president Trump and EPA administrators Elden have talked about a 65% cut on the epa's budget this would get the very programs that keep our air clean our water safe and our children healthy
▶ 1:43:22this threatens every program at EPA including the brownfields program and House Republicans have been silent on these cuts to EPA um Mr Miller would massive cuts to the EPA funding harm the brownfields program and the work of your organizations yes or no it comes down to efficiency you're so you're telling me that if there's a 65% cut
▶ 1:43:53to EPA that you don't think there could be an impact to the brownfields program is that what you're saying I don't know okay until that reduction was thank you um The Honorable um conon have what is your thought if there's a 6 65% cut to EPA budget do you think they're cutting the funding for the brownfields program then it will have an impact on the brownfields program and that's why
▶ 1:44:23I'm trying to Advocate we need to in this budget environment and in this political environment we should be looking at the funding sources and we should be looking at the leverage at The Leverage because even with the current Brownfield funding it doesn't come close to matching the opportunity that we have to achieve here so I'd want to look at all of it so would it be safe for you to say there shouldn't be a single penny cut to the program uh no that there should not be
▶ 1:44:53or no you're not saying that I'm not saying that I'm saying we need to take a look at the program to leverage the dollars to do even more in which case it could justify increasing and as we've been discussing today there could be good reason to increase the money if we're getting 20 times the benefit that would be a good deal in my view okay thank you Mr uh mayor BWI many Brownfield sites are in um rural areas lowincome communities and communes of color how would funding Cuts impact efforts to clean up contaminated land in a disadvantaged
▶ 1:45:24communities I can only speak to what's going on in Elizabeth right now we have a $500,000 grant for job training and there's no one picking up the phone at EPA uh Miss Stoneham do you have any thoughts on this yes I would say that cutting Staffing by 65% would significantly impact the brownfields program in Houston just the regional coordination that we experience with them on a reoccurring basis which is monthly and sometimes weekly depending on the projects would
▶ 1:45:54slow us down significantly in addition to the progress happening in the communities that we impact which are major which are majorly underserved and low income great thank you uh mayor bage as Congress discusses the reauthorization of the pro of the brownfields program are there any improvements or incentives you recommend to better direct grants to disadvantaged communities in in my written testimony I talk about the cleanup grants and I also talk about the ability to access the dollars and to draw
▶ 1:46:24down the money as quickly as possible okay Miss Stoneham how do brownfields uh grants leverage private sector investment and what happens to those Investments if Federal funding disappears so having access to Federal makes makes it easier to attract more private investment especially with the land bank taking that on saves the developer frankly time and money because we're willing to take on that responsib as opposed to having
▶ 1:46:55them solely do this themselves thank you um the EPA brownfields program is an important um program for communities even in my district actually quite a bit in my district um in Carson California we received $1.8 million in Grants to clean up a former oil refinery site so that the Los Angeles sanitation can build a recycled water treatment facility on the property this grant was made possible because of the increase brownfields program funding
▶ 1:47:25in the infrastructure law a law that Democrats fought for and passed and that I will remind folks not a single Republican that's currently on the Energy and Commerce Committee voted for so as we fight back against devastating cuts to the EPA I urge my Republican colleagues to speak up and to defend the good work that EPA does for all our communities aob back J lady yields back now recognize representative fluger for his five minutes questioning thank you Mr chairman and uh
▶ 1:47:55uh Mr canot I want to talk to you about streamlining um but before I do that I just want to give a shout out to director zeldon uh for the good work that he is doing to find the fraud waste and abuse in these slush funds that have gone to fund Nos and other organizations uh and I appreciate your answer there previously um you know on the fact that no we we we can still fund Brownfield projects and look to to uh more efficiently operate our government and that's something that we're we're focused on so in your testimony
▶ 1:48:25you talked about approv build and comply um which I think offers a pretty intriguing solution uh can you expand on on that concept and and talk about the streamlining of Permitting and other issues that will help us with this uh this topic that we're talking about today yeah yes Congressman the the concept is actually very well practiced but in a small scale in in under the banner of permit by rule there are lots of examples where Congress has looked at a very specific issue and legislatively approved you
▶ 1:48:55know the activity to go forward while still requiring compliance again it may be a controversial area but the border wall is an example of that bipartisan legislation in 2006 provided for that and it allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to certify construction and to wave permitting again not compliance but wave permitting and each administration of President Obama U president Trump and then President Biden each of their Homeland Security um directors use that Authority recently you had the Congress for
▶ 1:49:25the sake of I think one semiconductor plant and it was critical uh legislatively waping NE waving NEPA okay now the plant is still complying with all the environmental laws it's still subject to all that permitting it's not just it's not subject to five years of waiting around for the environmental review to get done they're just getting on with compliance so that's happened in Congress and at the administrative level at the federal and state level including in your state we had Congressman of Pennsylvania there's actually well a establish procedures for for automatic
▶ 1:49:55permitting okay and by Texas is the is the king of the states when it comes to that things move Investments happen well thank you I may come back to you on the state and local coordination there I want to go to Mr Miller um when it comes to rural issues obviously this is important to me I I represent a very rural uh District but one that has a tremendous amount of energy one that could benefit very uh very greatly uh but we see um you know more of a uh I guess an urge
▶ 1:50:26to show uh some uh to do uh Urban projects rather than rural so maybe talk to me a little bit about some of the barriers that uh that have impacted us on the rural community I'm a big believer in in in our rural areas we have kind of view them as a as a blank canvas and a lot of people you know at least in the Commonwealth of Virginia and more urban areas because of urban sprawl and for instance data centers and construction of them taking up a
▶ 1:50:56property that that could be used for other things that those people think would be of more benefit I think it's a amazing opportunity for rural areas for recruitment of data centers and to bring them to those rural areas uh a lot of data centers prefer to be in an area that's kind of away especially when you're talking about Department of Defense and in more sensitive type data centers so I I really think a concise effort should be put on the recruitment
▶ 1:51:27of data centers to rural areas and even you know through through this Brownfield funding you know maybe a set aside for data centers preferably for Rural data centers but especially for Rural or for data center type projects I think uh that's the future I mean I think we all know that and we have to have the power generation for those data centers which in brownfields present excellent opportunity for
▶ 1:51:57that especially in rural areas so whether rural or Urban these projects are beneficial they help us uh in a number of ways but specifically on the rural areas can you talk to us about maybe some of the challenges they face when it comes to not being able to match funds because we have small communities or you know how do they overcome that well and that that's one of the items I mentioned of course with the EPA Brownfield fund specifically you know we talked about more funding from a Grant standpoint for redevelopment not necessarily I think they do a wonderful job with the
▶ 1:52:27assessment uh though I love this approved Bill comply uh method that's being we we just need to figure out a way to we we can utilize matching funds but we need Redevelopment funds from EPA in rural areas we're really good to to have a certain pot of money especially State money for some of this development but you have to have those matching funds so
▶ 1:52:57again I mentioned in my opening remarks if we could create something maybe that you know with some of this Brownfield funding po rural areas and it can even have a match requirement to that I think everybody's fine with that because we can stack that's that's what we all do I think it's what everybody does to make projects work especially at the cost we're looking at for these type of projects thank you my time's expired yeld back gentan yields back now recognize Mr ainl representative ainl for his five minutes of questions
▶ 1:53:28thank you chair uh Mr conon I appreciate your proactive and prescriptive set of policy proposals for this and I think it might help me to bring it to life to use a specific example with you I represent Massachusetts we have a lot of Brownfield sites in Massachusetts many of them Prime spots for redevelopment we also have big shortage of housing in Massachusetts and challenges with local zoning and land use restrictions that make it hard to build
▶ 1:53:58the housing that we need imagine a circumstance where there was a a major Brownfield site state-owned or that the locality granted to the state and the state came to you and said uh we want to develop this we want to we want to really build a huge amount of housing on this site we got a big shortage of Housing and because it's a Brownfield it's we can bypass local zoning in this in in in the in the future that you are envisioning in your written
▶ 1:54:28testimony talk me through like what that would look like how you would advise them and how you would stack private and public Capital to make it happen so first you need the zoning okay so as soon as it's clear this is for housing okay that's the that that's the first gate so now you have the local suitability second gate you got to do the assessment assessment is not it's not expensive and it doesn't take a lot of time and everyone and people know how to do it now these professionals are sitting here the EPA could pay for that or you think the state would
▶ 1:54:58pay for that well actually if I knew as the developer that I could actually get through the permitting process then and get the project up and running in under two years I'll pay for the assessment got it okay because it's I'm not at risk now yeah that's the key if I'm a developer I know that I'm only one in 20 is going to pay off I can't do 20 assessments but I'll pay for the one if I know I will actually be able to develop on it that's the key to this process what do you mean is what do you mean by not at risk for it I mean that's true now isn't it but they're not at risk for it so what happens is I get the zoning
▶ 1:55:29okay I then do the I then wait for the assessment and that takes longer than it should and then when the assessment's done then I go in and I still don't know if I'm going to get all of my other permits oh I see sir that's that's the the environmental permit so I distinguish citing and assessment from permitting I still don't know that somebody's not going to come in and shut me down you know two-thirds of the way through my development two and a half years later that's the big problem that's why you again it's the sites you don't see investors show up for that the ones you should be worried about right because
▶ 1:55:59investors will go where they can get the return on their investment fastest and and and for data centers that's certainly the case if I can't get it up and running under a year I'm not interested okay and so that that's the critical step and if the assessment came back as showing contaminants again in your ideal scenario what happens next provided that the developer in the state are still on board with wanting to hous well actually these great professionals have put together I mean there's just a cookbook for that and it's cookie cutter everyone knows what they need to do they know what the thresholds
▶ 1:56:30are they know how to do whether you have to cap the site or do some soil con removal or put industrial not housing so you put the industrial on the lightly contaminated locations the housing on the clean ones so that process is now really well I mean they're great at it and so my view is let the professionals do a good job let them do what they know how to do already and the friction that you identify in our current system is that there is not enough pre-approval of those professionals to just go out and do it yeah just go out and do it and here here's the issue if you imagine that we actually have to do 20
▶ 1:57:00to 100x right there's no growth of the professional government class to be able to keep up with all that all that requirement right we need to let each government professional I don't want to lose the government professionals I just want them looking over a hundred sites right and feel and moving a hundred sites along rather than focusing on one or two right and and more importantly I want them inspecting and enforcing against you know against the bad guys who are rare uh rather than have them focusing on the good guys
▶ 1:57:30who actually know what they're doing mayor did you want to speak to that I just want to reinforce his uh his point we we had a uh old plastics factory and we did the assessment with Brownfield dollars and the assessment said you have to clean away three fet of the soil and remove that soil and then you could put a little Lea field there if we didn't remove the 3T of soil we'd have to put pavement there so we chose to remove the 3 ft of soil build two little Le
▶ 1:58:00fields and actually we took the bad soil and brought it to the site that I described that was the mall where we are uh preventing the lee8 from going into What's called the Arthur Kill the Waterway there so it was a win-win for everyone involved but uh once the assessment was done and the plan is there then you can leave it to the the Mayors or the economic development directors to follow up on the next process y back thank you gentleman
▶ 1:58:30yields back now recognize representative Miller Meeks for her five minutes of questioning thank you chairman Griffin and ranking member tono for holding this important hearing today and I also want to thank our Witnesses for testifying before this subcommittee Iowa like other states has abandoned idled or underutilized industrial or commercial properties where real or perceived environmental contamination hinders Redevelopment the brown Fields Program is essential to helping communities address these challenges turning what were once underutilized and potentially
▶ 1:59:00hazardous sites into spaces for economic growth Environmental Protection and public health improvements U Mr canatan your testimony calls for leveraging private Market forces and certified professionals to enhance the impact of government programs how can the EPA better integrate private sector involvement into Brownfield Redevelopment efforts and what role can private investment play in accelerating the clean up and Redevelopment of these sites um when it comes to certified professionals the analogy I like to use is is taxes
▶ 1:59:31so I don't go to my CPA uh and then tell them what I'm expecting to earn next year and having the CPA evaluated and then go to the IRS and get the permission for me to earn the money before I'm allowed to pay my taxes I earn the money I talk to my CPA the CPA Sayes you know what the taxes should be I then send that to the IRS okay and then if I cheated or lie they come after me and so I see this the same way we have this incredible class of private sector professionals now whove you know who are almost all of whom are certified
▶ 2:00:01um to do the legal work the biological work the engineering work to provide full Assurance of environmental and public health and safety uh uh just like OSHA by the way OSHA doesn't give you permits you build your plant and OSHA comes in and inspects and enforces afterwards so if we apply the same thing to the environmental regime um this is what can unleash um unleash speed when you unleash speed uh you unleash money okay you know if I've got a dollar to spend and I can get
▶ 2:00:31that dollar back in a year I'm going to go there versus I have a dollar to spend and I get 20 cents back in five years okay it's just it's just just economics and speed is everything and if I can put my if I'm going to put my money to a software company and I'm going to see it in two years um and I know my same money in an infrastructure project is seven or eight years away where's my money going to go go to the software company thank you and you addressed uh permitting an approval so I won't ask that question Mr buwad you mentioned in your testimony the use of multi-purpose grants and restrictive
▶ 2:01:02view of the the EPA has taken of their use in past hearing Witnesses have testified on the benefits of using this program to revitalize Economic Opportunity or construct affordable housing is flexibility a straint for the program and you can you explain how the restricted view EPA has regarding these grants has made it more difficult for commity communities with several Brownfield properties well the multi-purpose grants as you said creates flexibility and that's something we push for in the 2018 reauthorization
▶ 2:01:32and we're extremely grateful for that it also helps uh with some of the other Witnesses were talking about with rural communities and those communities with a lot less population and those grants the multi-purpose grants clearly gives a leg up to those communities Mr Miller you mentioned that for every Federal dollar invested in brownfields cleanup communi see an average return of $20 in economic activity can you elaborate on how these economic returns are measured and
▶ 2:02:02Are there specific success stories from Southwestern Virginia or other rural areas that highlight the long-term economic benefits of the brown Fields Program absolutely I mentioned I believe earlier to a previous question project intersection which is in Norton Virginia uh we raised able to you know turn a small amount of Brownfield funding into close to $35 million in investment uh to develop that industrial
▶ 2:02:32site so uh that number uh is actually an EPA figure and I would would probably say at least in the Cal Fields it would be a whole lot higher in terms of what the return is uh that we receive thank you you also highlighted that the Brownsville Redevelopment creates over 10 jobs per 100,000 spent and how are these jobs being allocated and what steps can be taken to ensure that displace rural workers uh to representative Luger's comment
▶ 2:03:03as well as younger Generations in these communities are able to access these opportunities and and that that's an issue we deal with it's a nut we haven't cracked yet because of limited population of a working age uh you know we will create new job opportunities a lot of times people in their current position will move as we all would to a position uh with better compensation so uh that is an issue we're dealing with what we're hoping to see and what we have started to notice to see
▶ 2:03:33in in our rural area especially after after covid is we are finally seeing for the first time though a small amount at least some in migration coming into our rural areas for more urban areas and so we certainly when those people do come to the area we want to be able to to have things in place that they can make a living and and prosper thank you my time's expired I yield back G yields back now recognize Mr Menendez for his five minutes of questioning thank you chairman thank you ranking member
▶ 2:04:03mayor bage as I mentioned earlier I'm grateful for your National leadership on the brown Fields task force as well as your work back home in Elizabeth in your tenure as mayor you have taken on the challenges posed by Elizabeth's industrial history headon and you serve as a national leader in advancing Brownfield remediation mayor can you share some examples of how the brownfields program has supported Elizabeth's Economic Development and environmental well-being especially those examples that you're most proud of well Congressman thank you very much
▶ 2:04:33thank you for your kind comments as well the one you we're all familiar with that I've testified here is the Mills at Jersey Gardens which I spoke about earlier uh 200 acre Landfield it's now has 2 million square feet of economic development with hotels and restaurants as well as the 5,000 construction jobs another one is a hope 6 program uh in 1999 we took two outdated public
▶ 2:05:04housing projects and recreated them into new uh hope six uh housing not only some market rate housing but also some mostly uh affordable housing we're currently developing around the train station which you visit not not long ago where we've taken a lot of vacant land and have developed a housing uh part of the working with the Brownfield Development Associate New Jersey Brownfield development New Jersey
▶ 2:05:34Transit committed $70 million to a new train station that has helped the economic development as well Harborfront Villas was another project on the waterfront that's created Market rid housing so those are three of the projects plus the Little League field that I just mentioned as well and we velop some neighborhood gas stations now into small public uses so in short you would it's fair to say that the brownfields program has helped transform Elizabeth well it's created an awful lot of Economic Development as well as jobs and
▶ 2:06:04tax ratables I appreciate that because I want to talk about um in addition to all the projects that you just mentioned last year groundwork Elizabeth received a $500,000 job training Grant from the brownfields program to train 75 students and place 40 in environmental jobs I think you've alluded to it earlier but mayor can you provide an update on groundwork Elizabeth's Grant so the groundwork Elizabeth Grant would go towards uh we're as you know Congressman we're a densely populated community
▶ 2:06:34and we worked diligently to identify resources in order to address brownfields and economic development the Mills of Jersey Gardens is one area but getting into this specific issue groundwork Elizabeth has worked with the Housing Authority in our city they've worked with uh other nonprofits they've worked to develop job training for young people this proposal generated almost a million dollar award from the National Science Foundation for air quality
▶ 2:07:05monitoring walks that we're doing in partnership with Ruckers University I I say this that not only is the brownfields grant responsible for that but it's generated money from Ruckers University and other areas in order to work on air pollution issues being a hub of Transportation where the city of Elizabeth sits in the state of New Jersey yeah absolutely and groundwork and I appreciate you having me in with Senator Booker to to speak with them directly about the work that they're doing and
▶ 2:07:35with respect to that specific Grant my understanding is that um it's currently being delayed the funding that was appropriated the $500,000 is that accurate so actually as uh I told Congressman palone earlier is on the train on the way here this morning at 6:40 and I was informed that the grant has been held up based on uh chaos yeah it's disappointing because it would have put students to work it would have uh helped facilitate the remediation of New Jersey's brownfields
▶ 2:08:05and it would have connected folks to good paying jobs which I think is such a bipartison set of accomplishments that we could have been doing right now but is held up because of President Trump's unconstitutional funding freeze preventing congressionally authorized grants from reaching the communities that we all represent present and it's obviously disruptive um to the things that we all want to make progress on so mayor bu just if I could ask you yes or no question in your experience has EPA staff provide Elizabeth and other communities
▶ 2:08:35with valuable technical assistance related to Brownfield Remediation in my 33 years as the mayor we've worked very closely with the EPA under Democratic and Republic administrations in order to benefit my community yeah I mean they they the the staff does an incredible job we need to fund the EPA make sure that we don't have Staffing Cuts so we can continue the incredible work that you've testified here today thank you for your leadership uh it's a real privilege to call you a partner and a friend with that I yield back gentleman yields back now recognize
▶ 2:09:05Mr Evans for five minutes of questioning thank you Mr chairman and thank you to the ranking member and of course to our Witnesses for taking the time today uh my first question actually to miss stonum um in a previous life I was the code enforcement supervisor for a local municipality um and in that one of the biggest headaches that I had to deal with was uh either um abandoned or defunct commercial or industrial properties within the city um that attracted just a lot of you know in local parlaments um they were problem properties we had one particular
▶ 2:09:36one where it became the de facto Dumping Ground for anybody that didn't want to pay to dispose of a sofa and so in one week we had 46 different sofas that were dumped behind this building that the city had to go pay to remove and in your testimony uh you mentioned that many of these properties um that are either in the Brownfield program or potentially viable for that program um are owned by am absentee landlords or Tangled in legal and financial complications that make uh Redevelopment nearly impossible and so that was something that I personally interacted
▶ 2:10:06with trying to uh again police up these some of these abandoned properties and so the first question to you is is there any way uh in how the EPA administers the Brownfield program that we we could address some of these obstacles to Redevelopment uh for for those properties where you have either an absentee landlord or it's Tangled Up in some sort of legal proceedings because it's a defunct company and potentially that property in that building is the most valuable asset that that entity still owns thank you for acknowledging
▶ 2:10:37that statement and for your previous service um for that particular portion of my testimony I was referring to one of the powers that lamb banks have which makes this unique and special which is clearing up some of those clouded title issues some of the airship property issues but also most of the time those properties are abandoned tax delinquent or non- tax generating properties that are also brownfields so I'm not sure exactly if the EPA can get involved with that particular Lane but I was just sharing that
▶ 2:11:07the land bank makes us unique in being able to address additional Powers outside of just the typical contamination or the assessment with the brownfields program so the land Banks do have some special play in spaces where you have a a property that's Tangled Up in some of those issues correct different land banks have different powers specifically in Texas we have the ability to request foreclosed properties at any point in the process and we're currently navigating that process with our County and our city leadership so
▶ 2:11:37we can help to intervene some of those problems in addition to the contamination potential um issues as well awesome got it thank you um uh Mr Mayor thank you for coming uh next question to you you mentioned MO bald properties again in our city we call them problem properties um I'm just curious can you speak to any barriers um that you've seen between this program and then actually getting those boots on the ground resources to local governments first of all I really appreciate your story
▶ 2:12:07by the way because I live that every day with staff members so uh the the mothball properties usually is dealing with absentee landlord and people aren't involved in the property and that's probably the bigger struggle the brownfields and the incentives if we can get sight control we can move some of these mothball properties back to the tax roles thank you and then uh Mr Miller um question for you kind of going off of
▶ 2:12:37that same vein just the the liability concerns that exist in these spaces can you can you talk about ways that we might be able to uh either reduce the a liability or assuage some of the concerns for the landlords to be able to get additional properties into a program like this to be able to Revitalize for additional industry or or commercial uses sure in our region most of the Brownfield development is at a much larger scale for economic development projects but in our downtowns
▶ 2:13:08you keep in mind most of our towns are a population between 50 and a thousand so so small in most of those towns maybe have one in the downtown district one land or one person that owns a lot of that property so what we've been able to do with that though is is through assessment and then through the implementation of essentially tearing down a lot of the facilities and then creating an opportunity for them to rebuild a better structure
▶ 2:13:38and and so that's intriguing to me the district that I represent my largest municipality is almost 150,000 folks and then I go down same thing to small municipalities that don't even have their own Police Department so can you speak to specifically anything that you've seen in that space uh with those smaller localities that's working for you people working together I mean really I mean that's one of the things a lot of times especially in a rural area people may be uncomfortable even with the word Brownfield uh be because they're
▶ 2:14:09not familiar with it so really essentially people working together the land owner people that in the position that that you once found yourself in you know some of the building officials uh and everybody working together and again that's probably a difference between a small rural area and in a larger urban area thank you yield back gentan Ys back I appreciate that and now recognize Mr lansman for his five minutes of questions thank you Mr chairman and thank you for uh this hearing incredibly important the Brownfield
▶ 2:14:39program has been a huge game changer for folks uh and communities back in Southwest Ohio uh we've done so much uh Redevelopment work with this program and so I three sets of questions as we're sort of wrapping up here and we'll ask them across the board uh answer them as you see fit but one is a question about as we look to reauthorize what are the big changes I I've heard
▶ 2:15:09a few of them but I'm just I'm curious if you had to you know pick the top two or three what are the top two or three big changes that you want us to to focus on two uh the state the state's role has come up and I'm curious what that looks like uh or what it should look like and Mr Miller in particular when we have these communities that struggle to get the investment is that a role for the state
▶ 2:15:40to play I mean is is am I jumping to the wrong conclusion I'm just curious in terms of what role the state is or isn't playing but should be playing uh and then finally it we just can't not talk about the EPA stuff because it's a huge problem um if you just talk a little bit about the the the the funding freeze and and the cuts and how you would want us to approach this you know what you what you would like to see the United States Congress do as it
▶ 2:16:10relates to this program and the withholding of of Grants so three questions we'll start with the big changes the role of the state and then the EPA cuts and funding freees um the most important thing you can do is look at this opportunity at scale the program has crept its way up to tens of thousands but it's a 100 thousands you have hundreds of thousands opportunity so I would work backwards from how do we get almost all of it redeveloped and put together a suite of programs
▶ 2:16:40of which the EPA piece is just one one important but just one aspect um speed so automatic permitting however you come up with it legislative so we not tied up in forever the money will flood into these communities believe me uh because the sites are so great uh and then for States uh States I would I would call it just because I think this came up presumptive permitting which is that you get it and then yeah okay sorry keep going that's great and then then for States as it turns out states by the way do most of the permitting including
▶ 2:17:10delegated programs and States want this freedom because they know what they want to do they're close to the communities that's why Texas is so good at this okay and you know if it works it works and there they still have high level could you say that again Texas is what Texas is so good at this and they sure Environmental Compliance yeah so you know we should be competing with them yeah Congressman the naturally more money is got to be the top of the uh category
▶ 2:17:40and you know we talked about caps set of $10 million for clean up and multi-purpose grants uh one of our Congress members Mikey Cheryl has introduced a bill along with Mike Turner who's uh in Ohio Mike used to be a co-chair with me on the US Conference of Mayors Brown Fields task force way back when and you know they have a bipartisan tax incentive bill that bill would be helpful along with
▶ 2:18:11reauthorization uh of this it's called HR 815 allows companies to expense their cleanup costs in the year that had incurred so those issues would be important and helpful as far as the state goes you know I've worked really well with the state of New Jersey and I think that often depends on the relationship between Mayors and governors and the freeze and the freeze of course yes I mean is there something you want this Congress to do well I'm curious
▶ 2:18:41to know why and I don't mean to be a smartass but why are we spending 4 hours here we're not going to have any funding and people to eventually execute what we're doing here it's a good question in terms of the changes absolutely will Echo more resources but also could there be more flexibility for acquisition funds we can't even use the assessment dollars or cleanup dollars if you don't have site control so if there could be a line item to where you can also use dollars for acquisition would be a game Cher
▶ 2:19:11um in terms of the state's role Texas is awesome um but I also say if there could be um a streamlined approach to make sure we're not working in silos because depending on if you're talking to the tcq the Texas Railroad Commission and kind of just depends on which program is applicable um and then of course just making sure that we're able to access the technical experts to help us spend the dollars I'm out of time and out of respect to the chair and the rest of the committee i y back sorry we'll get Dwayne's answer later when when the
▶ 2:19:41Texas delegation is talking again I now recognize M fedorek for her four for her five minutes of questioning excellent well good afternoon I think it's afternoon now thank you all for your expertise uh this is a fascinating uh subject and I would love to spend 10 minutes talking to each of you about this but we have a very limited time so I'm really going to zero in on the AI uh issues here uh I agree with Mr canatan that this could AI could drive or power
▶ 2:20:12the fourth uh Industrial Revolution in our country uh but in order to do that we need to power Ai and meeting the energy demands of this business are that is a substantial challenge for our country it's why I launched an AI and energy working group this week and invite uh you all to participate uh we initiated an RFI uh seeking information so I hope you all will participate in that Mr canatan you have particularly piqued my interest with your
▶ 2:20:42thoughts on permitting reform I spent 12 years permitting on the as an environmental permitter in my state as a state utility Comm commissioner and so have a decent amount of experience in that um you mentioned this idea of certifying a third-party expert site assessments are uh that's brilliant what's preventing this from happening broadly um what's preventing it is is not accepting the fruits of their labor in law federal law
▶ 2:21:12in law because they do the work they certify it they're liable you know professionally if they if they're cheating or lying like CPA mhm and then we spend 5 years working to agree with them okay so my my view is let's put the private sector professionals that we've trained to work and let's accept the fruits of their work great love that in my state once a once an area has been permitted or certified to be safe for construction you can rebuild in that same site without going through permitting again so it's kind of the same
▶ 2:21:42type of cont D I also mentioned because you're a former regulator when we have a major storm the utilities are incredible at rebuilding as fast as humanly possible true it's the same process it's the same people they know what they're doing they know how to comply and we we were so Overjoyed when the electricity system has stood back up in 48 hours if we want to build new infrastructure four years five years six years why don't we take the example of our emergencies and make that standard practice and the same on your NEPA idea on
▶ 2:22:13the unquantified environmental impact so um I'll be following up on those and I'm sure many of my colleagues will be as well I wanted to zero in a little bit more on your um interconnection proposal the six-month window that's the only area where I think you might be a little overly optimistic having um gone through a lot of that on the myo level the interconnection cues and the studies required so talk a little bit more about what you envision there and how much um your vision is tied to actual experience
▶ 2:22:43trying to go through those interconnection processes so having suffered through this wearing many different hats over 35 years um there's only a techn technological solution to the inter intersection interconnection problem so we have to get on with applying the AI and the hardware systems and the RTO currently aren't funded and their business model isn't set up to do it that way so I I really believe that is the only way through this and our target has to be six months because we have to build at the need of speed so using AI to help them run their
▶ 2:23:13studies faster when they're because they're operating 12 15 16 different spreadsheet models and it was one thing when you're when you're like you know attaching dozens or hundreds of projects we're going to be attaching thousands or tens of thousands of projects just the raw just the labor of doing that um we we can't keep up the technology is going to solve our our problem but we're we're 10 years behind in applying it and have you talked to any of the grid uh any of them which ones are open to this
▶ 2:23:43um stay tuned for an interesting assess announcement that's coming I can't say anything further on that okay very good um um then uh just with my remaining one minute I would like uh you and and others if they have time to elaborate on um what else should we be doing to stay ahead because I'm really worried that we're going to be falling behind uh China on our ability to really meet the energy demands of this um industry so Mr canatan if you could start um really
▶ 2:24:13focus on the communities actually want to build so let's let's put a priority where people actually want to do something we spent a lot of time trying to work in areas where people just don't want to see the construction so I i' I'd start there start with yes and create a competition for outcomes rather than work with all the propin children okay 20 seconds anybody else Dwayne Miller wants to say he'll take all those places you actually read my mind any rural area with specific interest in Southwest Virginia yeah and
▶ 2:24:43North Dakota yeah yes maam all right thank you I yield back G lady yields back I recognize Mr for his 5 minutes of question uh thank you Mr chairman and thank you to all of our Witnesses for being here today the EPA Brown F program revitalizes communities by transforming contaminated properties into economic assets it attracts private investment creates jobs and boost local tax revenues through funding and technical assistance for the assessment cleanup and Redevelopment of
▶ 2:25:14potentially contaminated former commercial industrial sites this transformation eliminates environmental hazards and stimulates economic activity benefiting U businesses and residents uh this is critically important uh a prime example of this type of development is the recent $2 million Award of an EPA Brownsville cleaner program grant for the City of Orleans to support the environmental remediation of the
▶ 2:25:44former nav former Naval support activity complex uh in the downtown Bywater neighborhood this vast now vacant complex completed in 1919 by the United States Navy Navy formerly served as logistic station um for the port of New Orleans and the military training site deactivated and sold to the City of New Orleans in 2011 for redevelopment it comprises some 84,000 square foot six-story
▶ 2:26:14buildings and on about 1.5 million square foot site thanks enlarg the EPA Brownville funding the complex is now being redeveloped to create mixed use development with 295 affordable residential units in ground floor retail space including a grocery store and as the primary retailer uh Miss stonum since taking office president Trump has pledged to cut funding to EPA
▶ 2:26:44by 65% undertaking significant uh indiscriminate staff firing ir ings and terminated congressionally appropriated EPA grant funding to local recipients can you tell us how the current atmosphere of the uncertainty impacts the EPA Brownfield programs uh Awards and projects now underway in your home of Houston absolutely it has significantly impacted our project timeline in us being able to release procurement opportunities it also
▶ 2:27:14reduces the potential for more training opportunities not just for my staff and the contractors that we work with but also community members who directly want to better understand how they can receive access to funding allocations and just being able to um see how they can amplify what they want to directly do in their neighborhoods and then just the relationships that we built of working with our grant officer the chemist that we talk to that reviews the reports on a regular basis just so we can continue the work that we're doing
▶ 2:27:45and also continue to pursue more funding opportunities mayor boit um I began my career in local government serving on the New Orleans city council many years ago so I understand and appreciate the incredible job that you have to do as a mayor and your employees do um with limited resources what would gutting our career Workforce at EPA including those at the Brownfield program who provide technical assistance mean to your Municipal Employees uh in the city
▶ 2:28:15of Elizabeth who partner with EPA to carry out these projects so we're we're a very Urban dense community and taking the EPA away from our city which has the largest port on the East Coast the second largest in the country uh air pollution issues Brownfield issues Economic Development issues without having the EPA as a partner we run the risk of higher pollution and less AB less availability
▶ 2:28:45of vacant land to develop Miss um Stone without EPA Brown su's program would the projects listed in your testimony still be vacant blighted eyes soures in our community absolutely the trash incinerator site was abandoned for 60 years and I strongly believe it would continue to still be abandoned and wouldn't have a partner to step up to take on the complex measure of having over 40 feet of trash and cinerator site currently
▶ 2:29:15still there uh Mr Mayor boage in your opinion should we keep the funding of EPA Brownsville in its current level and without it what happens in your communities well I'm always looking for more so cutting cutting it is a nonsense cutting is not cutting is should not be an would you agree that it's counterproductive and that we actually lose money and not gain money by making these kind of ill-thought cuts well you heard testimony
▶ 2:29:46from Mr Miller earlier that every dollar of the brown Fields generates $20 doar in additional funding that doesn't sound very um efficient and we're talking about a an effort from Doge to to be more efficient to cut uh waste Fraud and Abuse if you're putting in a dollar but you're getting 20 back that seems pretty efficient to me it's extremely efficient for local governments because we have the ability not only to generate tax revenue but also jobs which then
▶ 2:30:16creates more income tax Etc thank you Mr Mayor my time is exceeded Mr chairman thank you gentan yels back now recognize the gentleman from Texas for his five minutes questions about time okay so we're going to have fun here so um how many sites total sites in the country we'll start down here on the left is it say kot conon conon I can do this how many sites in the United States would you say there are Brownfield
▶ 2:30:46more than 400,000 400,000 um would you would you agree Mr conon that when we've got almost a 37 trillion dollar deficit that we ought to be focused on reducing that in as many ways as possible uh addressing the deficit one of the most along National Security the two most important priorities for America in my personal view would you agree with that mayor you know we I I in a way yes
▶ 2:31:16but we recycle everything else we need to start recycling Our Land M Donan would agree yes we need to work on Mr Miller yes okay um so the average looking at sites youall may know the answer to this question or not what is the do we know the acreage of every single site do we have that in database the size of the site of the Brownfield
▶ 2:31:46site if I may Congressman I believe the local governments and the state governments would have that information I'm not aware of a National Database sure well Texas commissional environmental equality says there's 207 Brownfield sites in Texas in my home District along the Gul Coast we have 10 sites so the EPA is working with getting the word out so Mr con I think you talked about businesses being willing to get in there and re and redo this as quickly as possible if we can get the permitting process low does
▶ 2:32:17the EPA send out regular emails letters how do they get the word out to potential businesses uh Mr Caron I'll come back to you if you know that about there's some there's an there is a possible you know business to be done here I think the answer is there's hundreds of different ways all of this gets communicated uh federal state and locally uh and it's a hodg Podge but it is now coalescing into this understanding
▶ 2:32:47of 400,000 sites at different points and maybe to get a jump on on your point which is we can and should sustain the EPA contribution to this effort but but I want to see all 400,000 addressed yeah but we have to do them in order of ones that yield the most economic benefit ex exactly do we that mayor does has that been your experience in my experience yes Congressman I mean the landfill was
▶ 2:33:17causing health issues in our community and not only did we take away the health issue we generated economic development through jobs as well as uh uh open space and you see that in Houston M I grew up on in Houston lived in a t already 71 years September 23 I brought this up the last Turing on brownfields I would be remiss if I don't bring it up again the cleanup site of of the on the site that daon or Dyan Park formerly known
▶ 2:33:47as minute made right minute made park now sits on the home of the Astros a success story not every Brownfield site will be lucky and something like that but would you Hazard a guess or how long have you been doing this let me ask you that Miss Don I've been president for three years formerly I was a board member so I've been in this industry for about 15 so what was the impact of the Redevelopment of that for the Houston Town of Houston do you have those figures when they went I don't necessarily have the
▶ 2:34:17numbers but I'm happy to follow up with that but I will say just the Resurgence of downtown with significant developments such as the former minute made park has created more housing opportunities job opportunities and just overall commercial Redevelopment I'm going to assume Mr Miller I think you said something earlier about maybe it being those being proud PR areas for nuclear in some instances in your comments or did I miss that no that's correct we actually as I mentioned
▶ 2:34:48we identified seven uh sites in our region six of the seven were brownfields and all seven scored very highly in the the industry standard now that's in your Commonwealth of Virginia correct it's just within Southwest Virginia Southwest Virginia um is there a rating I'm sure there is of severity of these sites some that have uh are you familiar with the Brio site Miss stonum
▶ 2:35:18in South part of Houston over toward dexe Farm south of Hobby Airport about 10 miles it's it's been a long time since it was an issue I'm not familiar with that specific probably predated you but the severity okay well good enough I'll leave it there Mr chairman I'll yield back thank you very much for yielding back now recognize Mr Soto for his five minutes questioning thank you Mr chairman and thank you to our Witnesses I know it's been a long day you're almost through it you know
▶ 2:35:48we're here talking about about Brown Fields polluted lands that we see throughout all of our districts even in Florida where a lot of the areas in Central Florida are very new we see that brownfields are bad for public health they're bad for business they're bad for communities when you look at places like downtown CMI or downtown Orlando you'll see gas stations that were around 10 20 years ago and now it's just sitting there abandoned in the middle of downtown these are areas that when they're restored bring huge economic
▶ 2:36:19growth to areas I'm thrilled that through the infrastructure law we saw uh over a billion dollars in investment in these brownfields programs when you look at Florida itself in Florida's n9th congressional district we have 45 sites in Orange County where Orlando is one of the most urban areas of our district four in ool and 31 in Poke County a lot of old Citrus sites and uh and helping out with mining in that area and
▶ 2:36:49then since 1997 we've seen in Florida over 235 contaminated sites cleaned up in Florida almost 90,000 jobs so we know that this can be helpful so which is when I saw the 65% cut uh to EPA spending I was deeply concerned about that now it looks like it won't be staff alone it'll be spending cuts and and obviously uh we want to be mindful that this isn't strategic and it could hurt programs like the Brownfield uh mayor bull uh how could did
▶ 2:37:20a reduction in 65% spending or huge reduction staff affect Brownfield projects that you're working on well if it happens all the ones it'll create chaos and uh that seems to be what's going on at the moment I I would not like as a mayor of the fourth largest city in New Jersey not be able to rely on EPA and EPA funding you know a long time ago I lived in New Jersey and worked in Jersey City where oh Jersey City at the lacana building in Jersey City and then in uh for
▶ 2:37:50credential and I saw the the important reuse uh through these Brownfield programs like many new jerseyans I'm a Floridian for over half a lifetime now and uh work very closely with uh our ranking member Frank palone and others and and we see this in in Central Florida and areas that uh even though they may be a little newer they're still already brownfields and and it's just leaving economic growth on the table uh do you think this would affect the number of years it takes to put the projects
▶ 2:38:21forward absolutely I mean you've heard an awful lot of testimony from Mr con about the process and if you eliminate the people who are reviewing the process then the mathematical equation is it takes even that much longer and then how important is consistency in getting investment and raising bonds to help match some of these funds well being the fourth largest city unlike the rural and the small towns we have the ability to raise money
▶ 2:38:51through bonding issues and that is helpful in redeveloping a Brownfield site but if you don't have the people to review it and you don't have the assessments done properly then it takes that much longer and the Bonding Agency is going to give you a more difficult rate to borrow that money Mr canot and I did appreciate your comments about the need to try to streamline these so I'm trying to find what is that careful balance to have an efficient review where it's not dragging on and on and on but we're not not just stamping
▶ 2:39:21even a well-qualified private sector's plan without at least some review so where do we find that that balance uh with with something so sensitive as brownfields well the great advantage of the way we've constructed our modern environmental laws is they all have um reporting monitoring self-reporting of non-compliance um auditing inspection and enforcement and very different from what I started in my career um and
▶ 2:39:51then many of many of you uh we now have a culture of compliance when it comes to the environment in fact you so non-compliance is very rare and especially with respect to the kinds of big infrastructure projects that I've been talking about okay they can't afford not to comply so my view is can we please let them and they still have to do all of the all the mandatory things with the judicial review behind that and citizen suits so there's still risk if you screw up um we're just just putting 99% of our effort on the people that
▶ 2:40:21don't screw up and this goes to the resources issue you're raising I really want to see our our quite capable environmental professionals that are in these agencies I want them working on the hard problems I don't want them working on the easy problems I think we can find we can find a really uh good outcome here but also I would just note we have 400,000 to work on and there's no amount of increase in the brownfields budget which again I want money there but there's no amount of increase that's going to get the rest the 40,000 we've only done you know tens of thousands
▶ 2:40:52in 25 years so I want to be sure that I hope you will look bigger and say let's go after all of them because we need them of which EPA is one contributing part which is why we need to keep EPA funding steady to keep these projects going thanks so much n y back genten y's back I'm want to take a point of personal privilege since he mentioned aola and uh Orlando uh M constituent who lives not too far from Mr Miller is M mclung who plays for a two-way contract with the Orlando Magic and the oolo magic and is a
▶ 2:41:22threee winner of the dunk contest and Mr chairman both Mr Miller and I know his family and we wish him well if I may I saw him jump over sha to dunk last year to win the championship uh he we're going to claim him partially if that's okay with you sir since we will share we just want to make sure the Orlando Magic pick him up full time and that being said I support that we'll get the petitions going we're doing it right here in the Energy and Commerce Committee there you go that being said uh we have the pro we have the policy in our
▶ 2:41:52committee of anyone who is on the committee being able to wave on Miss Dingle uh considers this an important matter and has sat here for some time so that she can wave on to the committee we welcome her and now recognize Miss Dingle for her five minutes of questions thank you Mr chairman for letting me be here and for this important hearing I'm epa's Brownfield programs and thank you to all of the witnesses I am I know um theable content for a long time we've worked together on things we agree most of the time
▶ 2:42:22um and it's great to be with all the witnesses as we've heard today the Brownfield programs have a long history of empowering States local communities and stakeholders to work together to clean up contaminated sites protect public health and restore land for productive use it has enjoyed strong bipartisan support in this committee and and I am hopeful that it'll continue in this Congress in my district and across Southeast Michigan the River Community Conference operates one of the most successful
▶ 2:42:52programs in the country as Jim knows serving 20 communities across Three Counties and over 900,000 residents the DCC has secured and distributed more than $21 million in Grants for site cleanups and their assessments it's revitalized 200 sites generating more than $700 million in investment creating jobs and strengthening the tax base of our down river communities through through the Brownfield programs the DCC has made Michigan a more vibrant
▶ 2:43:22sustainable and attractive place to live work visit and raise a family and we need to make sure this success continues we must free authorize and fully fund the program and if you think people don't care it continues to be an issue that brings many people that uh to town hall meetings every quarter that I've hold that one we're heavy industrial area we have a lot of places that uh need to be cleaned up so
▶ 2:43:53uh the Brownfield programs delivers Real Results and we must ensure it remains a priority mayor bage a lot of people have asked you the same questions I was going to so I'm going to ask you the same question but a way if the brownfields programs it's set to become insolvent in 2026 what will be the impact on your community if these resources are allowed to last so we have identified 57 Brownfield properties of which we've developed about 15
▶ 2:44:23to 18 properties without the ability to have assessment dollars or cleanup dollars then our uh efforts to revitalize that property would be put off for another day or years or may not get cleaned up ever and there're you know when we are revitalizing a community Through brownfields programs it's imperative that we Center said community in the planning in implementation process assuring that we are serving their needs
▶ 2:44:53first and foremost Miss Stoneham you emphasized that a key part of Redevelopment is ensuring to that end of product it's reflective of the priorities for your community can you talk about more about how you accomplished this when you were administrating your Brownfield grants in Houston happy too we have a brownfields activation committee which is comprised of local community leaders policy experts professional and anyone who just cares whether you're doing air quality soil quality water
▶ 2:45:23quality we convene them on a quarterly basis in order to discuss our Pro projects and to directly listen to what they would like to see but we also host Community visioning sessions with our Architects so we can discuss what Housing Solutions can be placed whether it's a duplex a town home or whatever typology that may be um we also Incorporated in the Houston Land Bank policy a neighborhood advisory Council so regardless of it's is a Brownfield or not not they have a scoring portion of our criteria so when we procure land and
▶ 2:45:53give it to a builder we actually gave them 15 out of the 50 points thank you you know what's important I'm going to say this to all of you is to remember that Brownfield sites usually consist of multiple hazards that pose threats to the public health of their local communities they're aware of it they're scared of it and that's the issue that drives a lot of this wanting to be uh cleaned up revitalization of Brownfield field does not only mean an economic recovery but the removal of threats that will contribute to the protection of
▶ 2:46:23our People's Health Miss Stoneham during your testimony you mentioned that significant threats their Brownfield sites present to the communities you work with in Houston can you speak more to the specific health challenges you've tackled through your work with the landbank sure and I also want to share saying that I've adopted from one of my colleagues from adapta which is everything is a Brownfield until proven not guilty and we take that approach to everything that we look at when we're assessing the opportunities
▶ 2:46:54now I'm not an environmental scientist but I will say for our our project Yellow Cab we removed about 20 feet of soil some underground storage tanks we found levels of dioxin um and just made sure that we're very transparent also with the findings that we found and publicly share that on our website so we're also educating the community about what a Brownfield is what these contaminants are and they can directly talk to our Consultants so they can better understand what Solutions we're proposing to move forward with them thank you I must
▶ 2:47:24yield back I thank the gentle lady for yielding back seeing no further Witnesses I ask unanimous consent to insert in the record the documents included in the staff hearing documents list without objection so ordered I remind members that they have 10 business days to submit questions for the record I'm already thinking of some and I ask the witnesses to respond to those questions promptly without committee is
▶ 2:48:17adjourned for