Brownfields and Red Ink: The Costs of Contaminated (and Idle) Land

Land contamination imposes a wide variety of different types of financial, environmental, and social costs, some of which may be experienced by individuals and organizations located far from any brownfield sites. The better these diverse costs are understood and recognized, the more prepared public sector managers will be to make choices about economic development efforts and other subsidies that may minimize them. This article examines two distinct sets of costs, which need to be compared with respect to how they accrue to the citizens of different political units so that decision makers can determine their most appropriate courses of action: (1) status quo costs& mdash; those associated with not mitigating and redeveloping brownfields, including lost real estate and business tax revenues, decreasing densities and their costs, and the public health and pollution mitigation costs associated with ignoring sources of contamination; and (2) mitigation costs — those associated with redevelopment efforts, including site assessments, actual mitigations, redevelopment, and possible post–remediation monitoring and maintenance. In both instances, I disaggregate costs and point to some of the less direct impacts and spillover effects that need to be considered. I then consider the parties that may be likely to bear these economic burdens — and highlight the fact that even urban brownfields are not exclusively a “city problem.” I conclude with evidence from the public record on the efficiency of brownfield subsidies, and review the economic rationale for public sector brownfield programs as a key element of economic development efforts.