The Economic Impact of Brownfield and Superfund Cleanup Sites

Two of the best-known U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) programs are the Brownfields and Superfund cleanups. Brownfields and Superfund sites typically require massive, costly cleanup and rehabilitation in order to remove contamination and return them to a usable state.

Cleaning up Brownfields and Superfund sites permits the government to address public health and broader environmental concerns. Remediation of these sites that are typically off-limits to economic development often helps create jobs and other economic impacts. This kind of work is gaining attention since President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act passed in November 2021. The bill invests $21 billion to clean up Brownfields and Superfund sites, among other related projects.

Economic Benefits of Brownfield and Superfund Redevelopment

Redeveloping Superfund and Brownfields sites may lead to a variety of economic benefits. As these areas are cleaned and redeveloped, they are used in a multitude of ways—for individual businesses, manufacturing facilities, residences, and more. In the case of both programs, reducing negative environmental elements leads to long-term economic benefits by reducing public health risks. Below, we take a closer look at potential economic impact of Brownfields and Superfund sites separately.

Impact of Brownfields Program

The EPA says the Brownfields Program creates jobs and other economic benefits, such as redeveloping land so that new lots don’t have to be paved over or otherwise developed. The agency said that every dollar it spends is multiplied over and over in the form of business and job creation. Project assessment, cleanup, and revolving loan fund cooperative agreements spark job creation. This project and the jobs it creates are facilitated in large part by the EPA’s Brownfields grants and funding.

In its last fiscal year, which was marked by pandemic-induced lockdowns and a slowdown in economic activity, the EPA fell short of some of its Brownfield goals. It cleaned up 62 of an expected 140 properties, and made 313 ready for reuse, out of an expected 684, as of March 1, 2022.

Brownfields sites tend to be located centrally in metro areas and often already have connection to existing infrastructure. By making these sites suitable for use, developers can limit costs related to infrastructure, while simultaneously minimizing additional negative environmental impact. Residents living on or near Brownfields sites have been shown to drive less, on average, than other metro residents. Altogether, these benefits contribute to a tendency for average residential property value increases of between 5% and 15.2% within 1.29 miles of brownfield sites.

Impact of Superfund Program

Superfund sites constitute the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites. While a primary goal of Superfund cleanup is to mitigate these environmental and health concerns, some Superfund sites are reusable following de-contamination. In this way, vacant or underused sites may eventually support business or other economic activity.

For 2020, the EPA identified 632 Superfund sites in reuse with available economic data. These sites supported over 9,900 businesses with total annual sales of more than $63 billion. These businesses employed over 227,000 employees earning $16.3 billion in income. Each of these figures has increased dramatically in just the last decade, as the number of Superfund sites in reuse with available data has more than quadrupled.

Other Considerations

Besides the potential economic benefits of cleaning up Superfund and Brownfields sites, it is also important to consider the downsides of leaving these areas untouched. As mentioned above, there are many negative public health effects attributable to these areas when the government leaves them uncleaned. However, due to the varied and complex nature of these sites, their contaminants, and short- and long-term health impacts, it is difficult to calculate these costs.

There are other economic downsides to leaving Brownfields and Superfunds unaddressed. The EPA indicates that site cleanup deters vandalism, trespassing, and further property damage. These sites can also lead to further environmental degradation in other areas, extending the impact beyond the identified Superfund or Brownfields sites themselves. In these ways, the negative effects of uncleaned Brownfields and Superfund sites go beyond just the lost potential of redeveloped businesses as described above.

The Bottom Line

Brownfields and Superfund sites are not only environmentally hazardous and dangerous to public health, but they are also areas of significant missed economic potential. Cleaning up these sites and making them reusable allows for business, residential, and other development with billions of dollars of potential economic benefit to communities.