Indiana looks toward revitalizing inner-city areas:

But initial legislation in 1996 General Assembly fails to adequately address "brownfields."

During the 1995 legislative session, a volunteer lobbyist approached State Rep. Brian Bosma (R - Indianapolis) about filing a resolution regarding "brownfields," an issue of increasing concern in urban areas across the country. Rep. Bosma complied with the request and the resolution passed the Indiana House of Representatives.

The resolution specifically urged the Legislative Council (an executive committee of the General Assembly) to establish a study committee with the intent to explore the "redevelopment of unproductive and industrial chemically contaminated lands." Indiana had officially entered the nationally ongoing search for ways to revitalize inner city "brownfields": contaminated, abandoned or under-utilized industrial sites.

Brownfields exist all over Indiana in once thriving inner city areas where entrepreneurs initially established the mainstay of American industry and commerce. Over time, however, government and business allowed these areas to deteriorate, as economic interest and with it, wealth, pushed toward the suburbs. The automobile allowed the middle class to escape the city; business followed.

Private investment also shied away from the inner city with the advent of -- among other things -- federal environmental legislation that sought to make polluters and owners of polluted sites financially responsible for cleaning up contamination.

In some areas of Indiana the situation is particularly severe. By some accounts, thousands of acres of brownfields exist in Northwest Indiana alone due to the loss of an estimated 100,000 manufacturing jobs over the last 20 years. In general, experts point to billions of dollars in private and public investment in infrastructure being wasted by not utilizing these sites.

The effort now is to begin the public process of finding ways to channel public and private investment back to the inner city. These efforts can take many forms. However, the idea is to transform low-income neighborhoods once again into thriving economic zones that have an enhanced quality of life.

There are many economic, environmental and social implications of inner city redevelopment, not the least of which is checking urban sprawl. As former EPA Administrator William Reilly put it in 1992, "We do not really want as a matter of national environmental policy to locate in greenfields locations (i.e. corn fields), with all of the infrastructure and transportation and other consequences that has, when there are job needs and development needs and land that can serve those needs in developed areas in cities."

Ultimately, overcoming biases against investment in the inner city will have to involve banks, local governments, neighborhood organizations, individuals, businesses, state and federal agencies, and legislation in an open public policy process. It is apparent from experience in other parts of the country that back room deals and an overemphasis on confidentiality will be viewed with suspicion by inner city residents. Without their input and support, attempts at redevelopment are doomed to failure.

The legislative process for redevelopment of brownfields in Indiana took another step during the 1996 General Assembly. Sen. Vi Simpson (D - Bloomington) filed Senate Bill 450, claiming it was a brownfields bill. As filed, the bill was actually an expansion of Indiana's voluntary cleanup program. There was no mention of inner city socio-economically distressed areas in the bill whatsoever.

The voluntary cleanup program is geared mainly to existing commercial or industrial operations that have environmental cleanup problems. They are not necessarily located in inner city areas. The bill also would have used $12 million from an IDEM dedicated fund to allow cities and counties to engage in assessing sites for contamination.

Questions arose pertaining to the potential lack of a serious public process in the bill and the fact that inner city areas were not mentioned as a priority. In fact, at a 1994 conference organized by the Institute for Responsible Management, Inc., state brownfield experts "agreed there cannot be a one-to-one link between brownfields and state voluntary cleanup programs; many parties come forward as volunteers to clean sites for reasons wholly unrelated to urban brownfield reuse issues."

CAC with the guidance of the Grand Calumet Task Force, Save the Dunes Council, and the Hoosier Environmental Lobby (representing the Save the Dunes Council, Sierra Club, and Isaak Walton League) developed language which would have made socio-economically distressed areas at least one of the priorities for public funding for the program.

This amendment to the bill was offered by Bill Crawford (D - Indianapolis) before the House Environmental Affairs Committee with the support of the committee and its chairman, Rep. David Wolkins (R -Winona Lake). Rep. Mark Kruzan (D - Bloomington) played a key role in staving off objections to the amendment by the senate author before the committee. However, the bill ultimately died on the last day of the session due to squabbling by Public Service Indiana and other corporate interests over liability issues.

CAC and its allies will now seek to develop sensible brownfields legislation that truly has the health and welfare of the public as its centerpiece. The legislation must be multifaceted with the community as a whole involved in decisions pertaining to cleanup, the type of redevelopment needed, funding mechanisms, and other barriers to inner city revitalization.

Revitalizing our urban centers will benefit all of us both economically and environmentally as the restoration of the quality of life in our cities benefits all Hoosiers.

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