Green visions for brownfields: The politics of site remediation and redevelopment in four New Jersey cities

This dissertation evaluates whether New Jersey's Brownfield Program, a devolutionary, market-based approach to contaminated site remediation, can adequately or equitably address the brownfield problem in economically distressed cities. Analyzing the evolution of site remediation policy in New Jersey over the last two decades, it documents how business and industry have collaborated with Republican Administrations to loosen site remediation laws in order to expedite cleanups and to make the process less expensive and burdensome. The Brownfield Act, the most lenient law to date, devolves site remediation authority to local governments and the private sector while permitting flexible cleanup standards and providing minimal state oversight. This has amounted to a functional deregulation of site remediation and has resulted in inequitable implementation. Free market decision-making has meant that well located sites are being cleaned while those that are highly contaminated or located in neighborhoods are overlooked. Comparative case studies of four distressed cities in New Jersey explore how municipalities have used their new discretion over this policy area. The trajectory of the Brownfield Program in each city varies according to the nature of the governing coalition, whose composition is a function of the local political culture. Newark's is a concentrated growth coalition focusing on development in the Central Business District; Trenton's is a municipal coalition; Camden's is a community-based coalition, and Paterson's is factional and nonfunctional. The municipal governments in each of these struggling cities lack the capacity to effectively implement site remediation programs and they have attracted little private investment. The devolution of brownfield responsibilities from the state to the local level has had little impact on economically distressed cities, has had a deleterious effect on cleanup standards, has done nothing to enhance public participation, and has had a negligible impact on neighborhood revitalization. The withdrawal of state responsibility for site remediation has placed a huge burden on cities and threatens to jeopardize programmatic goals: protection of public health and environmental quality, and urban redevelopment. The dissertation concludes by recommending a strategy that includes federal environmental cleanup standards combined with strong state oversight and community involvement in land use planning at the local level.