Environmental Progress - Fall 2001

National Brownfields Conference Draws U.S., International Crowd

"Mobile workshops" provided up-close view of successes"

Director Cipriano

Approximately 3000 participants from throughout the U.S. as well as several foreign countries attended the National Brownfields Conference in September. Primary sponsor for the 2001 conference, held at McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, was the Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania. It was co-hosted by the Illinois EPA and the city of Chicago, with numerous supplemental sponsors. A highlight was a new and extremely popular event that took delegates from the conference to several successful brownfields projects in the Chicago area, for an up-close look at the restored and revitalized sites.

The conference provides stakeholders a forum for sharing their experiences with brownfields redevelopment and to learn new techniques from industry experts. Officials from federal, state and local organizations across the country, community members, property owners, government officials, developers and business leaders were on hand to discuss the approaches they have used to turn under-utilized or abandoned properties into productive sites.

Among the featured speakers were U.S.EPA Administrator Christie Whitman, IEPA Director Renee Cipriano, and Region 5 Administrator and former IEPA Director Tom Skinner. Several IEPA staff members served as presenters. Gary King, manager of the Division of Remediation Management, was a panelist at the Town Meeting Plenary, hosted by Juan Williams, a veteran newsman who is a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday, and the author of the non-fiction bestseller "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965."

Larry Eastep, manager of remedial projects at Illinois EPA, moderated a panel on "The Value of VCPs: State Voluntary Cleanup Programs and Brownfields" and Scott Phillips, a manager in the Division of Legal Counsel, participated in the panel dealing with state and federal brownfields legal issues. In addition, King moderated a panel on local government perspectives on brownfields redevelopment. Doug Clay, manager of the LUST section at IEPA, participated in a panel on UST site re-use.

The mobile workshops took delegates to:

• 76th and Albany - a 63-acre industrial park on Chicago's Southside being developed as one of the first new inner city industrial parks in the nation.
  
  
• Lake Calumet Area - an area known for heavy industry and manufacturing facilities with considerable amounts of green space offering valuable habitat in an urbanized region where the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, in cooperation with federal agencies, are working to assemble properties, protect open space, and improve habitat.
  
  
• Midwest Center for Green Technology - a demonstration of the variety of municipal and financing sources available for remediatation and redevelopment of a large, illegal dumpsite, as well as methods of recycling existing structures, and sustainable redevelopment When completed, the refurbished building will be a model of "green" building design with a wide array of environmentally friendly and energy efficient features including solar panels that will be used both to supply some electricity needs at the site and throughout the city to demonstrate solar technology.
  
  
• Overview of Chicago Brownfield Redevelopment Initiatives - this field trip highlighted the city's efforts to bring industrial, residential, and recreational uses back to abandoned sites. Participants saw completed projects as well as work in progress.
  
  
• National Brownfield Association Site - Several current real estate developments on brownfield sites in downtown Chicago have had to deal with more than the usual legacies of former industrial land uses. These brownfields are being cleaned up and redeveloped, with financial and technical assistance provided by state and federal agencies.