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By Land and By Sea
L.I. Sound, brownfields dominate state's environmental agenda
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Business New Haven
5/14/2001
By: Amy Gilroy
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A century and a half following the Industrial Revolution, New England is faced with the daunting task of reversing as many years of toxic runoff in its rivers, estuaries and lakes, chemical seepage into industrial and residential grounds and hazardous emissions in the air.
Yes, pollution has been around that long. In the 1800s, London's Thames River emitted such a stench that the House of Lords issued an edict that it be cleaned and that Londoners should boil their water before drinking it.
As one of the first industrialized areas in the New World, New England's environmental challenges were and remain significant, particularly in the area of brownfields - loosely defined as industrial sites where ground contamination is either suspected or documented.
No less challenging has been the clean up of the Long Island Sound, a waterbody whose value to Connecticut in boating, commercial fishing and recreation is estimated at well over $3 billion a year, according to the state's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
While brownfields remediation is a relatively new undertaking in Connecticut (less than a decade), the Long Island Sound cleanup has been at least a 15-year struggle.
But significant progress has been made in both areas recently.
In the city of New Haven alone, some 25 brownfields properties have been cleaned up and returned to productive use since 1996, with most of that work taking place over the past three years.
In the Long Island sound watershed, more than 300 acres of Connecticut marshlands have been restored and in excess of 30 miles of state rivers reopened for anadromous (migrating) fish such as salmon in just the past two years, according to a report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released in March.
The report also found an 83-percent reduction in toxic chemicals released into the Sound's watershed between 1988 and 1998, and a 20-percent reduction in nitrogen loads since 1990.
Much work remains in the effort to “save the Sound,” as evidenced by the alarming lobster die-off since 1999. An important milestone toward this aim was attained last month with an EPA ruling that mandated a reduction in nitrogen loading in Long Island Sound by 58.5 percent by the year 2014.
After 15 years of study, the EPA maintains that nitrogen is the primary pollutant affecting fish in the Sound. As well, nitrogen may be responsible for the recent lobster die-off.
The new EPA plan sets limits on the nitrogen run-off allowed by sewage-treatment facilities in Connecticut and New York. EPA officials tout the plan because it proposes an innovative means for municipalities to fund required upgrades for sewage-treatment plants.
“This is the first program in the nation of this type,” says the DEP's director of planning of standards for the Water Management Bureau, Tom Morrissey. “We like to think it is the most innovative water-pollution program to come out anywhere in 20 to 30 years.”
The EPA has set a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for nitrogen discharge, which each sewage-treatment plant must meet in stages through 2014. However, to attain the TMDL standard will cost municipalities between $100,000 and millions of dollars, according to plant managers. To address this, the state DEP has devised a program to implement its TMDL limit, a so-called “credit-trading plan,” which will allow some plants to partially comply with the TMDL and then purchase “credits” from plants that fall below the TMDL.
Here is how it works: The state is concerned primarily with the total nitrogen level entering the Sound, rather than the individual level from each treatment plant. So, under the new credit-trading plan, if Hartford is two points above the mandated level and Norwalk is two points below, Hartford can purchase credits from Norwalk, for example. The DEP will act as a broker between the cities and towns for purchasing credits.
To understand the financial innovation of the credit-trading program, here's how a treatment plant filters out nitrogen - and how nitrogen affects the waterway.
When nitrogen, mainly from sewage treatment plants, spills into the Sound, it acts as fertilizer, stimulating excessive algae growth. The algae consumes oxygen as it dies and sinks to the bottom of the Sound, causing oxygen debt in the water, a condition known as hypoxia.
Hypoxia has caused oxygen levels in the Sound to sink as low as one milligram per liter (during the critical period of late June through September) while most aquatic life requires an oxygen level of 3.5 mg per liter. DEP officials project that the new EPA plan will restore oxygen levels to the 3.5-mg-per-liter target by 2014.
To achieve this, treatment facilities must alter their processing methods. During normal processing, wastewater flows into holding tanks, is slowed down and it settles. About 50 percent of the waste particles drop to the bottom of the tank and are removed. Then bacteria is introduced which consumes much of the remaining waste, explains West Haven Plant Manager Gary Zrelak.
“By changing the configuration in your tank, you can have those bacteria also consume nitrogen,” explains Zrelak. This is achieved by bubbling more air into the tank and then a second stage of removing all air.
“Once we go into that anaerobic state, the bacteria then consumes the nitrogen and gives off nitrogen gas, which just goes into the air and is not a pollutant,” he says.
This simple modification would cost the city of West Haven only about $100,000 a year and would bring nitrogen to a TMDL of eight to ten mg per liter. To get down to a level of three to five mg per liter would cost millions of dollars, because that would require building additional tanks, agree Zrelak and DEP officials.
The EPA has set a TMDL of 5.8 mg per liter, which falls in between, so some cities may avoid the extra millions of dollars in tank upgrades by purchasing credits. Other municipalities may elect to spend the millions and then sell credits.
“I think it's good; it's a fair way to do it,” says Zrelak.
Municipalities will find the value of their credits directly proportional to their proximity to the Sound. “Hartford is way up the Connecticut River, so a lot of its waste is lost by the time it impacts the Sound,” explains Zrelak. “So one pound of nitrogen from Hartford is not the same as from Greenwich,” Zrelak explains.
“In West Haven, our pound [of nitrogen] is worth 0.58 pounds, whereas down in Stamford, Greenwich or Norwalk, a pound is a pound.”
The DEP's graduated point scheme makes it more advantageous for Greenwich than Hartford to fund a complete sewage tank upgrade, as its credits are more valuable.
Morrissey estimates that most credits will sell for only $1 to $2 a day during the initial years of the plan, but increase in value to $20 to $30 a day as the 2014 deadline draws closer.
A proposal is currently before the General Assembly to adopt a single general permit for the 85 sewage treatments plants statewide to identify the annual reductions in TMDL for all the plants.
“Our hope is that the General Assembly will favorably look upon it during this session [which ends next month],” Morrissey says. “It would come into effect in July and we'd begin immediately.”
Even if the General Assembly does not pass the current proposal, each municipality will receive an individual permit setting the new nitrogen requirements, and they will be able to trade one-on-one with each other for credits, explains Morrissey, who asserts that a unified program would be more expedient.
Another area where state government is working more closely with local towns and cities to clean up the environment is brownfields.
Examples of brownfields are idle industrial properties, former scrapyards, abandoned gas stations. In each case, the mere suspicion of ground contamination is enough to scare off prospective buyers or developers and cause prime real estate to lay fallow. This in turn causes cities to lose money in taxes and jobs.
Brownfields cleanup is critical to the environment because if industrial sites can't be reused, businesses look to build on undeveloped land in places like Cheshire or Branford.
Until three years ago there was little brownfields remediation taking place in Connecticut. But with the passage of several federal programs administered by the state's Department of Economic & Community Development (DECD) as well as the EPA and by municipalities themselves, cleanup has now begun in earnest.
Brownfields remediation is of particular concern to New Haven, says city Business Services Officer Helen Rosenberg, because, “We have no available land in New Haven for commercial development, so we don't get the tax income and we don't have the jobs.”
But there are at least 50 to 75 underutilized acres of brownfields properties in New Haven that might otherwise generate tax revenues and jobs, Rosenberg says. Approximately 25 of these idle properties are on River Street.
There is also ample interest in purchasing property in New Haven, according to Rosenberg. “I get 20 or 30 requests a year and I can't help them because we don't have any [available] industrial property,” she says.
The 25 properties already assisted in New Haven attracted several small businesses which have generated “at least a couple of hundred jobs,” Rosenberg estimates.
Several recent grant programs and legislative efforts are underway which could help New Haven and other cities and towns attack the brownfields problem.
Last November a grant for $750,000 was awarded by DECD for a cleanup program run by the Regional Growth Partnership (RGP) in New Haven, a non-profit economic development corporation covering 15 member towns and cities from Milford to Madison and New Haven to Meriden. It has become particularly active in brownfields site investigation.
Site investigation (in contrast to actual clean up) is critical because a property must be evaluated before it can be cleaned up. Many properties that may require little or no clean-up lay fallow because it is suspected that they require millions of dollars in remediation.
In fact, many properties the RGP investigates turn out to have less contamination than expected, sometimes requiring $10,000 for the removal of a few underground tanks, explains RGP municipal services director Ilene Buckheit.
In 1997 the RGP received its first DECD grant for $575,000, which resulted in the investigation of 40 properties for potential remediation. With the second round of financing, Buckheit says, “We're trying to use the money more creatively and doing things like partnering with other grants and programs. Also, this time we are going to try to get into some actual remediation,” she adds.
To date two grants have been awarded from the latest DECD funding: one for $10,000 to the town of Hamden for the former Amoco gas station on Whitney Avenue and the other for $6,000 to New Haven. The latter will use the funds to investigate which sites should be targeted for remediation through a grant the City was previously awarded by the federal Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) for its Empowerment Zone program.
Additional applications for the RGP grant have been received by Hamden for four other sites (three along Welton Street and one on Dixwell Avenue), a site in New Haven on River Street and one in North Haven on State Street.
An application from a Milford brownfields site is also pending, Buckheit says, noting that most of the locations are former auto parts or scrap yards.
The RGP has also submitted an application for a grant from the EPA for $250,000 which should be decided upon shortly. “If we are successful in getting that grant it will be put toward brownfields cleanup in the Quinnipiac Conservation Development Corridor, which includes North Haven, New Haven and we are trying to include Wallingford,” explains Buckheit.
If the grant is awarded the RGP will assemble an advisory committee comprising representatives from participating towns as well as a representative from Yale, the University of New Haven, QRWP, the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce and two attorneys, who will administer the grant.
While the RGP's assistance program has helped several smaller business reclaim brownfields sites, recent state legislation may persuade larger corporations to remediate and redevelop brownfields.
A bill called the Industrial Site Investment Tax Credit was approved by the legislature in 1999, but is just being enacted now. The plan allows one-for-one tax credits to businesses that purchase industrial brownfields sites and return them to productive use.
“The idea behind it is to generate more economic activity, create additional jobs and taxes and clean up environmental sites,” explains Mike Lettieri, senior financial analyst for the DECD. While no one company has yet purchased land under the program, Lettieri notes, “It's a new program and whenever you are dealing with tax credits, it takes a while for people to feel out how they work.”
Under the program, if an individual business invests $20 million in a property, including clean-up, and returns at least the same amount in taxes (including payroll taxes) to the state, over any given period, then the business will earn a $20 million tax credit. To qualify for the program, individual businesses must invest at least $20 million, so it's not for everyone. Fund managers for investment funds can invest any amount, but the fund itself must have an asset value of at least $60 million.
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