Notes from the meeting held on Wednesday, February 20, 2002

5^th Floor Planning Department Conference Room

Edwin L. Crawford County Office Building

Present: Stacy Merola, Joanna Corey, Kenneth Kamlet, Chip McElwee, Ron Brink, Joe Graney, Wayne Jennings, Andre LaClair (member-designate), ________. Guest Experts: Frank Evangelisti, Mary Brophy, Bob Murphy, Tom Suozzo, Susan Cummins, Greg Lesniak, _________. AWE: Paul Thompson, Cindy Westerman

1. The meeting convened at 4:35 p.m. On a motion from Chip McElwee, seconded by Ron Brink, the minutes from the last meeting (January 23, 2002) were approved as submitted.

2. Member Items of Interest: (a) FOIL Request to DEC: Ken submitted a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request to DEC (to the Records Access Officer) on February 7^th, requesting copies of two documents relating to the Voluntary Cleanup Program: (a) Voluntary Cleanup Program Internal Procedures, and (b) Organization and Delegation Memo #94-32. He received a response dated February 8^th, providing a copy of the Organization and Delegation Memo, but denying access to the Internal Procedures document. The denial was based on the status of this document as a “non-final agency document. Ken appealed this denial to the Office of Hearings and Mediation on February 14^th (last Thursday). The grounds for the appeal were twofold: first, intra-agency documents (whether final or non-final) are subject to disclosure if they constitute “instructions to staff that affect the public.” (Ken cited 7 provisions of the document that directly affect the public—to the point of abrogating provisions of previously negotiated Voluntary Cleanup Agreements.) Second, even if the document were not deemed to affect the public, it would still not qualify for disclosure under the non-final document exemption—because the current version of the document has been in effect for 2-1/2 years and has been considered binding by DEC staff. Furthermore, disclosure of the document would not inhibit the free exchange of ideas among government policy-makers or compromise the deliberative process, which the non-final document exclusion was designed to protect. DEC must respond within 10 business days of receipt of the appeal (probably by around March 4^th).

(b) Tax Increment Financing Under New York State Law: At a meeting on Feb. 13^th (last Wednesday) of the Steering Committee overseeing work on the Broome County Plan, Dick D’Attilio of IDA commented that he didn’t think New York law allowed the use of Tax Increment Financing. TIFs are used in many jurisdictions to raise revenues or fund capital improvement projects in the Brownfields arena. Bond repayments are funded by the increased tax revenues resulting from redeveloped brownfield sites. Ken did a little checking. It turns out that, under Section 970-o of the Municipal Redevelopment Law, municipalities (including counties) are expressly authorized to issue tax increment bonds or tax increment bond anticipation notes, which are payable and secured by real property taxes allocated and paid.

(c) Rehabilitation of Blighted Areas: On another topic we have discussed, General Municipal Law § 970-b authorizes the employment of eminent domain powers to provide for the rehabilitation or redevelopment of “blighted areas.” “Blighted areas” are defined to include “a predominance of economically unproductive lands, buildings or structures, the redevelopment of which is needed to prevent further deterioration which would jeopardize the economic well being of the people.”

(d) BU Economic Development Model: Mary Sokolowski, from the office of BU’s V.P. for Economic Development & Technology Transfer (Don Colbert) made an interesting presentation this morning at a meeting of the Broome Chamber’s Small Business Council Legislative Committee. Whereas most universities that have tried to promote technology development have used the “push” model of technology transfer (i.e., University research products that are thought to have commercial application are attempted to be marketed). Their approach contemplates use of a “pull” model (similar to one successfully employed by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Institute. It would ask Southern Tier practitioners in various target industries what innovations were needed in their field and would use the resources of area universities to develop such targeted innovations. The concept of a non-profit Foundation for Technology Development that would fund and oversee the work of a for-profit venture capital fund called a Regional Development Corporation. This Corporation would develop incubators to assist start-up companies in commercializing the new technology. Ken mentioned that low-cost incubator facilities could be established at numerous under-utilized brownfield sites in the area. Mary was intrigued by the possibility that their non-profit Foundation could possibly team up with area localities to pursue EPA brownfield funding, such as brownfield cleanup revolving loan funds.

(e) Letter of Support from DEC Commissioner Erin M. Crotty: A Feb. 5, 2002 letter from Commissioner Crotty to Julie Sweet (copied to EPA) was passed around for review. It expressed support for Broome County’s application to EPA for a Brownfields Assessment Demonstration Pilot Grant. Ken thanked Tom Suozzo (guest expert) for his efforts in securing this letter from Commissioner Crotty.

(f) Brownfields Reform: There was a lively discussion (as there is at most meetings) of the status of New York State’s brownfields program. Rumors were mentioned that long-stalled reform legislation was moving forward and might be enacted this year. The legislation will likely provide for Technical Assistance Grants for citizens groups and municipalities. Bob Murphy indicated that the nature of whatever legislation passed would be determined by whether the Legislature decides to adopt an “Enforcement Model” (which views a brownfield site as a contaminated site that those responsible must be forced to cleanup) or an “Economic Development Model” (which view brownfield sites as underutilized land which can provide both environmental and economic benefits if beneficially reused).

3. Screening of Sites: A small group of Subcommittee members convened on February 12^th to receive a demonstration from Frank Evangelisti on the contents of, and retrievability of data from, the Brownfields Database. The group also reviewed a preliminary matrix prepared by Ken for the ranking of sites based on Environmental and Public Health considerations. The preliminary matrix contained 5 columns, as follows: Site, Availability of Data, Threat Potential, Regulatory Focus, and Rank Order. It was suggested that the second column be restated in a form comparable to that of the third and fourth columns—so that a High, Medium, or Low score would have the same positive or negative connotation from one column to the next. It was also suggested that the scoring units separating rank scores (H,M, and L) be made more uniform from one column (rating factor) to another.

Although he was not able to attend the February 12^th meeting, Ron Brink (BCHD) graciously agreed to try to fill in data gaps in the matrix prior to the next Subcommittee meeting.

An updated matrix was passed around (members of the group were asked to mark it “DRAFT”) at the Subcommittee meeting. Changes made subsequent to the work group meeting were as follows: (a) column 2 was changed to “Extent of Missing Data”; (b) column 5 was changed to “Relative Risk” (Mary Brophy raised concerns about this terminology, which is a term of art in risk assessment; it was decided to change it to something like ‘Relative Rank”); (c) extensive additional information from Ron Brink (based on BCHD’s database of information) was incorporated; (d) risk rating units were revamped to be more uniform; and (d) new rank orders were computed (both in risk designation letters and in relative numerical units).

Frank presented printouts from the database that arranged the available data in accordance with the three classification categories being used in rankings based on “Environmental and Public Health Considerations.” A surprising amount of information was made accessible in this way. However, some gaps and anomalies were also revealed. Frank agreed to incorporate additional data from the matrix, as supplied by Ron Brink, into the database. (Ken subsequently e-mailed an electronic form of the matrix to Frank to facilitate the transfer of data.)

Ken noted that the letter designations of sites (H,M,L) in the latest draft of the matrix were skewed and that there were many more Low-risk sites on the list than there were either Medium- or High-risk sites. However, the presence of the underlying numerical scores should nevertheless make it relatively easy to pick out the top (actually lowest-risk) 20 or so sites in accordance with our previously agreed-upon Work Plan. Ken agreed to rearrange the listed sites for the next meeting—so the group will be able to do a final check on the appropriateness of the relative ordering (based on environmental and health considerations).

Andre LaClair asked why the Town of Fenton Dump was not listed, while numerous other landfills are on the list. Ron Brink (who was the source of the landfills included on the list) could not explain this oversight and it was agreed that this landfill should be added to the list.

There was also an extensive discussion of sensitivities associated, not only with being on a “Brownfields” list, but of being on a list of potentially High-risk brownfield sites. This sensitivity was considered to be especially acute for occupied sites where an existing business might somehow be stigmatized or harmed economically. It was generally agreed that the risk of owner/occupant displeasure (or even litigation) being directed at the Brownfields Subcommittee was probably quite small for sites that have been formally investigated and evaluated by County or State (or Federal) regulators. The same is true of publicly owned sites. The most problematic sites are those that are privately owned and occupied (or up for sale) where the BFSC is not relying on official data. It was noted that, even for sites that have not been studied or evaluated by EPA or DEC, BCHD has extensive data on most sites in the County. There was debate as to whether disclosure letters should be sent to privately owned sites on our list to give site owners a period of time when they could object to their inclusion. The concern was that this would give outsiders the ability to exclude certain sites from being evaluated by County decision makers in common with numerous other similarly situated sites.

It was agreed that the following steps would be taken to mitigate potential owner sensitivities: (a) Future iterations of this and similar lists will be marked “DRAFT” or “Preliminary” and “For Discussion Purposes Only” and will bear other appropriate disclaimers (these lists are also meant to be internal deliberative documents that will not be publicly disseminated); (b) Ron and Tom will meet prior to the next meeting to flag potentially sensitive sites on the list for which little official data may exist; (c) per Stacy’s suggestion, such sites will be separated out from the main list and appropriately flagged to reflect their potential sensitivity; and (d) as suggested by Bob Murphy (and at previous meetings), we will generate two lists of sites based on environmental characteristics: one of “good” sites that pose few regulatory issues and are good candidates for redevelopment on this basis; and one of “bad” sites that may warrant priority attention BECAUSE of potential environmental issues. (Owners may be especially sensitive about sites in the latter category, but such sites are probably the least likely to have escaped official regulatory attention.)

4. Next meeting: The next meeting will be held on March 20, 2002 at 4:30 p.m. S&W (Stearns & Wheler) Redevelopment of Syracuse said it would provide a guest speaker. They will speak to us about their formation of “partnerships” (with developers, municipalities) to remediate and redevelop brownfield sites. In return for reduced or waived fees (and sharing the risks of an unsuccessful or more-costly-than-expected project), S&W shares in the proceeds of the new development project.

5. The meeting adjourned at 6:10 p.m.

Recorder, Ken Kamlet

2/27/02. Editor, Joanna Corey