Brownfield Cleanup Program Allows Transformation of Former Manufacturing/Commercial Facilities for Residential Development
Brydges Engineering in Environment & Energy (BE3 Corp) has recently completed and is continuing work on several projects that transform former manufacturing and commercial facilities into quality, affordable and market rate housing, and mixed commercial use. Years of industrial use left these sites with contamination.
With the support of BE3, the new property owners typically enter into a Brownfield Cleanup Program (BCP) Agreement with NYSDEC to remediate site contaminants to residential or higher standards and receive tax credits for their investment and remedial efforts. BE3 works closely with the developers from the very start of the application through the entire course of a project to obtain a Certificate of Completion (COC) – all the while adjusting the approach to maximize the tax credits received for remediating an otherwise un-developable property.
BE3 has supported these mostly mixed use and commercial/residential re-development projects in economically distressed communities and Opportunity Zones in both urban and rural areas which helps to re-vitalize the local communities and provide both new upscale residential and job opportunities. BE3 Brownfield projects have ranged across New York State from Buffalo and Rochester to Jamestown, Utica, Poughkeepsie and Hempstead, Long Island. These properties all have had a long history of industrial use, some with multiple uses that have imparted various and varied contamination issues. BE3 has used both conventional and innovative cost-effective approaches to remediate these sites with contamination issues that ranged from metals and poly aromatic hydrocarbon impacts to soils and petroleum and chlorinated solvents that impacted both soils and groundwater potentially creating vapor concerns affecting indoor air.
For a project in Jamestown New York, BE 3 completed the BCP application and conducted a detail remedial investigation to assess contamination in soil and groundwater for remedial planning. Historically the property was used for two different manufacturing operations starting in the late 1800s. Property use originally included production of yarns and cloth for a large mill operation. In the 1960s, the facility manufactured furniture and metal parts for furniture. Operations included electroplating, nonferrous die-casting, polishing, anodizing and coloring, brass and zinc castings and zinc, lead, magnesium, tin, brass, bronze, steel, and iron tubing, as well as cement, plastic, and rubber tubing.
For another facility in Buffalo, BE3 successfully completed a BCP remedial project that maximized the clients tax credits and brought the property back to unrestricted use as an affordable residential housing and medical facility complex. BE3 has completed several other Brownfield projects that have been re-developed into affordable housing units including two other properties in Buffalo, one in Utica and another scattered housing project throughout various neighborhoods in Rochester, New York. All these projects were completed in accordance with New York State Housing and Community Renewal (HCR) environmental requirements. BE3 is also currently working on a scattered housing affordable housing project for veterans which involved re-development of a former city school and various lots adjacent to the school.
BE3 work at these sites typically starts with Phase I & II ESAs and a BCP application followed by work plans, remedial investigations involving soil, groundwater and indoor and sub-slab air, remedial design, oversight, and engineering reports including site and soil management plans.
For more information on BE3’s approach to supporting projects for housing and mixed-use development, contact us at 716-249-6880 or jbrydges@be3corp.com