Notes from the meeting held on

Wednesday, September 19, 2001

5^th Floor Conference Room

County Office Building, Binghamton, NY

Present: Stacy Merola, Joanna Corey, Julie Sweet, Ken Kamlet (Chair), Cindy Westerman, Joe Graney, Ron Brink, Chip McElwee, and Paul Thompson. Guest Experts: Joe Moody (Town of Union), Joel Boyd (City of Binghamton), Bob Murphy (O’Connor, Gacioch). AWE: Susan Cummins, Greg Lesniak, ….

1. The meeting convened at 4:35 p.m. On a motion from Joe Graney, seconded by Ron Brink, the minutes from the last meeting (7/18/01) were approved, subject to fixing a numbering error noted by Chip McElwee (there are two paragraphs numbered “2” and no paragraph “5”). Our guest speaker, Gene Hulbert, Jr. of Hawk Engineering, was welcomed and introductions were exchanged.

2. Member Items of Interest: (a) Stacy mentioned an e-mail she had received from Waste Age magazine and that two informational reports had been received from NYS DEC—the NYS Superfund Registry (April 2001) and Status Report (July 2001). These will be kept on file in the EMC library.

(b) Stacy referenced a news report that the U.S. EPA was planning to treat the World Trade Center site as a Superfund Site, eligible for cleanup funding under the Superfund Trust Fund. There was brief discussion as to whether this was legitimate under the Superfund statute, which normally excludes coverage of contamination associated with building structures. It was pointed out that it was unlikely that anyone would challenge this decision, even if it were legally questionable. Also, it was doubtful that that the exclusion of building structures would apply once the building was demolished and any associated contaminants were exposed to the outside environment.

(c) Stacy passed around an article concerning the selection of two sites—the Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Suffolk County and Parcel Two of the Union Ship Canal in Buffalo—for participation in New York State’s ReBuild Now-NY pilot program, which promotes the reuse of shovel-ready brownfield sites.

(d) Stacy and Julie updated the group on the status of the Brownfields Database on which Frank Evangelisti and Planning Department summer intern have been working. Julie passed around a spiral-bound copy of a printout of the current database, which is largely complete. (A few additions and corrections still need to be made—including the insertion of several missing addresses and tax map parcel numbers. Joel Boyd will assist with missing City of Binghamton information. Ron Brink will review the overall draft document and add as much missing information as he can. The Chairman noted that DEC site numbers can probably be extracted from the status reports mentioned by Stacy in item 2(a), above.

(e) The Chairman asked for a status update on securing a student intern to assist the Brownfields Subcommittee. Julie and Stacy had been hopeful that a good graduate student intern candidate would be identified by Professor Frazier at Binghamton University. Unfortunately, the only interns this semester working with Dr. Frazier are receiving tuition waivers and are precluded from accepting other employment. Julie assured the group that the Planning Department has sufficient staff resources to complete the database and take the information to the GIS phase. Joe Graney indicated that the tuition waiver problem would not apply during the summer, when it might be possible to hire a 40-hour-per-week student to provide more intensive assistance. The same would be true during the 3-week break period in January, if it would be useful to have some intensive student assistance at that time. It was decided that the group would proceed for the time being as it has been with whatever support can be provided by the Planning Department.

(f) The Chairman passed around copies of 2 Press & Sun-Bulletin articles dealing with sewage infrastructure needs in parts of Broome County. One was a 6/3/01 column by Jeff Platsky, citing the lack of sewage capacity as a primary reason that more economic growth has not occurred in the Town of Kirkwood or on the abundant vacant land between the Industrial Park and the Pennsylvania border. The other was a 4/15/01 editorial advocating the construction of “a new sewage treatment plant or two” if the County intends to grow. Julie commented that she had provided information to the newspaper before the appearance of the editorial, which the editorial writer had chosen to ignore. There was no further discussion of these articles, which were presented primarily as a supplement to Gene Hulbert’s presentation on utility infrastructure in the County.

3. Utility Infrastructure Discussion Related to Site Ranking. Gene Hulbert called the group’s attention to several graphics he prepared, as illustrative of some general points relevant to the ranking and evaluation of brownfield sites. Gene’s graphics focused on the abandoned railroad yards in the City of Binghamton, in the area bounded on the north by Bevier Street, on the south by Court Street, on the east by Broad Avenue, and on the west by Brandywine. At least two of the candidate sites under consideration by the group are located in this area: the Stow Manufacturing site (#72) and the Phillips Foundry (#73).

Gene pointed to a USGS map of this area, from which one can extract relevant site information, including the size and topography of the site, its latitude and longitude coordinates, and its relationship to natural features. (Latitude and longitude coordinates can be used to access many other sources of archived information.) Aerial photographs and planimetric maps commissioned by the County are a useful source of demographic and land use information (i.e., residential versus commercial or industrial uses), in addition to showing a site’s relationship to the surrounding road system.

Information on gas and electric lines, public water and sewer, telephone (and other fiber-optic cable) service, and stormwater facilities can all be added to digitized maps and incorporated into computerized GIS systems. Some of this information is already available in digitized form, is easily accessible from local governments and utilities, and is already incorporated into the County’s overall GIS system. In other cases, this information is not part of the County’s GIS system, has not be digitized, and/or is not easy to obtain. City of Binghamton data, for example, is not generally accessible through the County’s GIS system and necessary information, where available, needs to be accessed manually. The City of Binghamton is apparently in the process of digitizing its water and sewer, but not stormwater, information. The locations of manholes or sewers is not yet reflected in the County’s GIS system.

Some utility providers, even though they are generally dependent on easements and rights of way granted by local governments, are reluctant to share digitized information on the location of their lines—perhaps because they fear legal liability if landowners rely on them and there is a problem. (They would rather have their own personnel flag the location of gas and electric lines prior to the onset of site-specific construction projects.)

In some cases, the practice may be inconsistent. For example, Time Warner is currently mapping the locations of its cables but may decide to treat the information as proprietary. Even if it is willing to reveal the location of its own fiber-optic lines, it may well be unaware of the location of nearby Verizon fiber-optic lines. (According to Bob Murphy, Verizon has, in many cases, “lost track” of the locations of its fiber optic lines.) As noted by Bob, this can easily result in imposing on a landowner the high cost of installing new fiber optic lines in close proximity to existing, but unknown, lines that are already there. Perhaps even worse, the apparent absence of such lines may be the deciding factor in the decision of desirable employers not to relocate to Broome County. Bob expressed the view that Broome County and its associated municipalities should impose as a legal requirement on all “public utilities” doing business in Broome County a requirement that they share information with local governments on the locations of their utility lines.

Gene briefly traced for the Subcommittee the extent of utility coverage in different parts of Broome County. For example, the Town of Maine has very few utilities. It has no water service except at the Airport. The Towns of Dickinson and Chenango have pretty extensive public water and sewage coverage (up to Chenango Bridge) and sewer service extends to “just short of the Airport.” The Town of Fenton is sewered in the Hillcrest Area and has more extensive water coverage. Colesville and Sanford have “nothing.” Kirkwood’s sewer service will “soon” extend to the State line and Conklin’s sewer service extends out to the Industrial Park. Deposit has its own sewage treatment plant. And the Town of Binghamton “has a lot of room for expansion” of its existing sewer service, and recently expanded its public water system. Windsor has a “poor” water system and about half of the Town of Vestal is not watered (i.e., it extends only from the River part way up the northern slopes of the hill).

Julie mentioned that the aerial photos taken by NYSEG (in conjunction with Hawk Engineering’s project for Broome County) are not “true digital ortho aerial photos—which creates some distortion when used for mapping purposes. She mentioned that New York State is scheduled to fly over all of Broome County in the Spring of 2002 and will take digital ortho aerial photos of the entire County.

The group thanked Gene Hulbert for his interesting presentation.

4. EPA Grant Opportunities: Three pending or upcoming EPA grant opportunities were discussed. Stacy first described EPA’s Job Training and Development Demonstration Pilot program, the application deadline for which is sometime in mid-October. Unfortunately, this grant appears to only be open to communities in or near existing Brownfield Assessment Pilot communities—which Binghamton is not. (The closest pilot program communities are Elmira and Syracuse.)

Stacy then described EPA’s new “USTfields Initiative,” which applies to underused industrial or commercial sites the redevelopment of which is complicated by environmental contamination from federally-regulated underground storage tanks. Although applicants for these grants are limited to States and Indian Tribes, States are encouraged to work with localities to identify particular pilot project sites. EPA intends to award up 40 pilot grants of up to $100,000 apiece. The application deadline is October 22, 2001. Julie asked whether it was known whether New York State planned to apply for this. The Chairman mentioned that a conference call was scheduled that very afternoon relating to this pilot program grant between U.S. EPA Region 2 and a New York State DEC representative (Maris Tirums, an environmental engineer with DEC’s Bureau of Spill Prevention and Response in Albany; her phone number is 518-402-9543). It was suggested that someone from the County check with DEC to find out if New York State plans to apply and, if so, whether they would be interested in addressing UST sites in Broome County. Broome County certainly has no shortage of qualifying sites.

Finally, the Chairman led a discussion of the forthcoming next round of Brownfield Assessment Demonstration pilots, which EPA Region 2 officials have encouraged us to pursue. No official Request for Proposals has yet been issued, but the announcement is expected within the next month. The Chairman outlined some of the key guidelines that have governed the last several rounds of pilot program grants. There is no reason to expect the guidelines to be significantly different in the next round. Pilot program grants are for up to $200,000 apiece, with the potential for an additional $50,000 for assessment of sites to be used for greenspace purposes. The assessment pilots are generally intended to assess brownfield sites and to test cleanup and redevelopment models. To be eligible for funding under the assessment pilot grants, pilot activities (a) must be directed toward environmental response activities preliminary to cleanup; (b) may be used to assess, identify, characterize, and plan response activities at contaminated sites targeted for redevelopment; (c) may be used for planning and/or studies regarding legal, fiscal, economic and other issues; (d) must be directed at sites where there is a release or threatened release of CERCLA hazardous substances (or of “pollutants or contaminants” which may present an imminent and substantial threat to public health or welfare); and (e) may be used for public or community involvement activities to explain brownfields site assessment, selection, characterization or cleanup. There is also a list of activities which may not be funded with pilot program moneys. According to last year’s guidelines, the projects that have the best chance of being funded are those which demonstrate “a true need, a quality project, and appropriate use of funds.”

Someone suggested that we should submit a proposal to fund the application of ranking criteria to our candidate list of brownfield sites. The Chairman pointed out that many other pilot communities have done projects of that kind, and that EPA has stated that its goal is “to select a broad array of assessment pilots that will serve as models for other communities across the nation.” If we merely replicate what other communities have done, EPA is unlikely to act favorably on our application. Joe Graney then suggested that are proposal take the form of applying the 3-pronged evaluation approach (outlined in the minutes of our July meeting) to build on the results of the earlier ranking studies performed by other pilot program communities. This would promote EPA’s objective of having new pilot projects build upon the insights gained by earlier pilots.

Chip encouraged the County to initiate preliminary steps to immediately gather materials necessary to move forward once the RFP is announced. Among such steps is securing the necessary authorizing Resolution from the County legislature; gathering letters of support from NYS DEC, participating localities, and local citizens groups. We should also put together a list of tasks to perform in preparing our submittal. He also suggested that we obtain a copy of Monroe County’s (City of Rochester) successful submittal to use as a model for our own. The Chairman noted that there is an extensive amount of information available on the internet about the many dozens of pilot projects carried out to date throughout the country.

Julie acknowledged the importance of touching base as soon as possible with Larry D’Andrea of EPA Region 2, who has offered to assist us in this effort. (She hoped that we have not waited too long already.) She and the Chairman agreed to jointly make such a call early the following week. An attempt will be made to find out when the new RFP is expected to be announced and how much time will be available to prepare a submittal.

The subcommittee unanimously endorsed a resolution (to be put in writing by Stacy) to actively pursue, in cooperation with the County Planning Commission, the forthcoming Pilot Program RFP. A resolution of support should be sought from the full EMC, but preliminary activities should proceed in the interim. Stacy will discuss with the EMC Chairman the desirability of securing more expeditious approval from the EMC executive committee.

5. Items for the Next Meeting: It was decided that no guest speaker would be lined up for the next meeting—to allow the flexibility to devote most or all of the meeting to assisting with the preparation of the Pilot Program grant proposal.

6. Next Meeting: The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 17th at 4:30 p.m.

The meeting adjourned at 6:00 p.m.

Recorder, Ken Kamlet

9/20/01

Editor, Joanna Corey