Lawmakers seek path to remediate brownfields through inventory

Indiana Republican Sen. Andy Zay has become all too familiar with environmental contamination.

As the state senator representing Andrews—a small town outside of Huntington—he’s seen firsthand the damage old factories and gas stations leave behind when they close.

Andrews, for example, has been tied up in legal battles with suburban Washington, D.C.-based Raytheon Technologies Corp. for years over groundwater contamination at a former United Technologies Automotive plant there. The town alleges in a still-active lawsuit filed in 2020 that the plant released hazardous chemicals that contaminated the water. The town advised residents in 2020 not to consume public water because of the potential presence of vinyl chloride and Trichloroethylene.

Zay said the problems left behind in Andrews have made it difficult to “build morale” and make deals for retail and commercial development or promote the area for tourism.

“It’s really been a draw-down on the morale of the county, but certainly for the folks in and around that town,” he said.

That was the impetus for Zay’s decision to introduce brownfields legislation two years ago and again this year. Brownfields are sites contaminated by chemicals, often from former uses like factories, auto repair shops, gas stations and dry cleaners. The contamination makes redeveloping the properties more costly and complicated, which can lead to sites sitting vacant for decades.

Zay’s Senate Bill 307 would allow the Indiana Brownfields Program to be used to study brownfields and to create a statewide inventory, although the bill provides no funding for the task. That inventory would be compiled and managed by the Indiana Finance Authority, which would be allowed to contract with state colleges or universities to help create and maintain the inventory.

Current registration of Indiana brownfields is limited to a 59-page list managed by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the Indiana Finance Authority. Information is collected only for properties that are actively involved in or have past involvement in one of the state’s brownfield programs, IFA spokesperson Stephanie McFarland told IBJ in an email.

That makes it difficult to understand the full extent of Indiana’s brownfields and how many still need to be remediated.

The inventory that would be allowed by SB 307, which the Senate has passed and a House committee now has in its hands, would require an “active search statewide of properties that might satisfy the definition of a brownfield,” McFarland said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the United States has 450,000 to a million brownfields, including both remediated and non-remediated properties. More than 2,600 are on Indiana’s current site list.

Zay said the Indiana Brownfields Program, which was designed to help communities navigate the complicated remediation process, hasn’t been funded in more than a decade. Only the EPA provides funding for actual remediation; the state program aims to provide communities with education, and technical and legal assistance.

Zay said he hopes funding to create the inventory will be allocated through the state budget in coming years, along with a grant program he wants to create that would provide state funds for actual remediation. It would be structured similar to the Community Crossings grant program, he said, which allows locals to apply for road funding toward specific projects.

Environmental remediation and economic development professionals say creating a brownfields inventory is a good start in tackling the larger issue.

“There’s a need to have a registry, and one in which there’s kind of a clear listing of, where are the brownfields in the state of Indiana?” David Van Gilder, senior policy and legal director for the Hoosier Environmental Council, told IBJ.

The Indy Chamber has made remediating brownfields a priority and is supportive of the bill.

In Marion County, contamination at properties like the former GM stamping plant and the RCA factory at Sherman Park presented barriers to redevelopment, said Taylor Hughes, the Chamber’s chief of staff.

Brownfields in suburban and rural areas have become more problematic over the last decade, he said. That includes Andrews, where Zay’s idea for the bill began.

The Finance Authority said it cannot comment on pending legislation.

But during a Senate committee meeting last month, Zay acknowledged the financial difficulty.

“It’s all a ‘may’ provision, but it creates an opportunity for us to reach back [later] and attach some funding to this environmental brownfield issue,” Zay told the Senate Committee on Environmental Affairs on Jan. 27. He said the IFA, if it’s provided funding, could “bring [the program] more up to date” and add staffing to “take on this bigger issue of really eliminating, or certainly seriously diminishing, our brownfield impact throughout the state of Indiana.”

He also said he doesn’t expect Indiana’s brownfield problem to be solved soon. He estimated the work could take 20 to 30 years.

When contamination is discovered on a property, usually when an economic development opportunity arises, Zay said, communities often scramble to pull together paperwork to apply for federal brownfield remediation funds.

“It’s a panic. It’s a little bit of hysteria,” Zay told the committee. He said an eventual state grant program would further “empower locals” to remediate brownfields.

Remediation professionals who spoke before the Senate committee said owners of property that qualifies as a brownfield are often reluctant to admit there’s a problem. They said state involvement would help.

Chris White with the Environmental Professionals of Indiana Council said he worked with a firm that was tasked in 2007 with attempting to create an inventory of brownfields in southeastern Indiana.

He found that communities were unprepared and did not trust the program.

He described the current method of brownfield remediation as “hit or miss”. The state’s 16 brownfield remediation firms compete for jobs on either end of the state without a thorough understanding of the breadth of the contamination.

“This is a great idea to get a state inventory of all the brownfields, and it also gives us a chance to pick maybe not the most valuable, but the highest priority, the worst of the worst, and get those out of the way so they can be redeveloped,” White told the committee.

Another Environmental Professionals of Indiana Council member, Darren Reese, agreed. Reese is president of SESCO Group, an Indianapolis-based statewide environmental investigation and remediation company. Reese told the committee that compiling an objective list academically would help avoid the complications that come from expecting property owners to self-report their brownfields.

“People aren’t usually putting their hands up in the air and saying, ‘Hey, I got a problem,’ until they have to,” Reese said. “There’s some serious regulatory issues that can go with that and be very expensive.”•