Chafee lauded for brownfields-cleanup effort

By Peter B. Lord, Journal Environment Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Standing before the gaping brick walls of the old Louttit Laundry building on Cranston Street yesterday morning, community leaders, business people and environmental advocates praised Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee for initiating legislation that may one day be used to bring the abandoned building back to life. President Bush signed Chafee's Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act into law on Jan. 11. He praised it as "the best of Washington" and hailed the bipartisan support it earned. "Brownfields" is the term applied to abandoned and polluted industrial properties. Developers avoid reusing such properties because they fear federal liability laws will force them to bear the costs of extensive cleanups -- and as a consquence much new industrial development takes place in the suburbs. Chafee's legislation authorizes $200 million annually in grants and loans to help clean up brownfields and provides liability protection for businesspeople working to redevelop such properties. Kari Lang, executive director of the West Broadway Neighborhood Association, said the two-story Louttit building is the gateway to that part of the city and right now, with its charred window frames and rubble-strewn lot, it doesn't provide a good impression. "I invite you to come back in a few years to see how we restore the gateway building," she said. Sharon Steele, president of the Rhode Island Association of Realtors, said her entire organization was in favor of the legislation. "No longer is America a frontier land," she said. "We have to work in a finite space and we can't overlook environmental wastelands left by past generations." Jan Reitsma, director of the state Department of Environmental Management, said his agency has already approved cleanups of 67 brownfields property that totaled 1,000 acres and later were developed into businesses supporting 1,000 jobs. "We are cleaning up these sites and working to keep development in urban boundaries instead of letting it sprawl out to our open spaces," Reitsma said. Chafee's bill will make many more cleanups happen, he said. Chafee said he first became concerned about brownfields when he was mayor of Warwick. "As long as properties are sitting abandoned they aren't generating property tax revenue and the reason is the liability issue," Chafee said. After all those years of losing efforts to get legislation passed, Chafee and the other sponsors, Senators Bob Smith, R-New Hampshire; Harry Reid, D-Nevada; and Barbara Boxer, D-California, were pleased when the House finally passed the bill on the last day of its session. Also voicing support for the legislation yesterday were Alan Front, senior vice president of government affairs for the Trust for Public Land; Tom Schumpert, executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corp., and Lynne Jennings, brownfields coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency. Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. did not attend the ceremony, but he later issued a statement saying Chafee's bill will help put the city's brownfields reclamation efforts and its mill restoration program on the fast track. The Louttit building has been vacant since 1987. Its interior was gutted by fire last May. Two years ago a survey by DEM found extensive contamination by oil and tetrachloroethylene. Cleanup is estimated to cost $1.5 million.

Published 01/23/2002

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