April 23, 2003—Accelerating its efforts to revitalize communities and stimulate the economy by restoring contaminated properties, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced a new national initiative to incorporate land reuse into its Superfund, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Brownfields, and Underground Storage Tank hazardous waste cleanup programs.
The “Land Revitalization Agenda” outlines sixty items that EPA can use to integrate land reuse into its cleanup programs throughout the country. Examples include:
- EPA review of policies and practices concerning liability issues to promote, where appropriate, revitalization of properties.
- EPA leveraging grant resources across multiple federal cleanup programs to facilitate area-wide cleanup and reuse of multiple contaminated properties.
- EPA piloting the use of written determinations stating that once-contaminated properties are ready for appropriate reuses.
Reuse has occurred at three hundred former Superfund sites. In the 1990s, EPA launched Corrective Action reforms aimed at accelerating cleanups at industrial sites. (Under RCRA Corrective Action, cleanups are required for all waste leaking into the environment from any source at a hazardous waste facility.) As a result, EPA and the states now have brought hundreds of RCRA facilities under control. Nearly 40 percent of these sites have either completed or made significant progress in their cleanups.
For more information, contact EPA.
