IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jenpmg/v46y2003i2p257-269.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Quantifying Long-term Environmental Regulatory Risk for Brownfields: Are Reopeners Really an Issue?

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Simons
  • John Pendergrass
  • Kimberly Winson-Geideman

Abstract

Brownfields are potentially contaminated sites that often present economic development opportunities that require financing. State environmental voluntary clean-up programmes (VCPs) offer closure letters as a way for developers to obtain assurance that their clean-up was completed properly and is 'bankable'. However, there is still fear among lenders about the potential for these closed remediated sites to be reopened and therefore negatively affect the value of the real estate as collateral. While it is believed to be an infrequent act, there has been no comprehensive study of reopeners, and therefore of the effectiveness of VCPs available. This study seeks to quantify the incidence of reopeners in the USA through a systematic inventory of VCP administrators. The authors initially find that among the 46 states with VCPs, only 12 cases were reopened out of 11 497 closed environmental cases, a reopener rate of between 0.1% and 0.2%. However, reopener rates may increase with more vigorous enforcement and over the passage of time. This information means that brownfield deals can go forward with confidence, and that the risk of reopeners can now be quantified, allowing cheaper insurance and more assurance that negative outcomes can be avoided.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Simons & John Pendergrass & Kimberly Winson-Geideman, 2003. "Quantifying Long-term Environmental Regulatory Risk for Brownfields: Are Reopeners Really an Issue?," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(2), pages 257-269.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jenpmg:v:46:y:2003:i:2:p:257-269
    DOI: 10.1080/0964056032000070945
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0964056032000070945
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0964056032000070945?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kai Hockerts, 2015. "A Cognitive Perspective on the Business Case for Corporate Sustainability," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(2), pages 102-122, February.
    2. David Adams & Christopher De Sousa & Steven Tiesdell, 2010. "Brownfield Development: A Comparison of North American and British Approaches," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 47(1), pages 75-104, January.
    3. Hunter Bacot & Cindy O’Dell, 2006. "Establishing Indicators to Evaluate Brownfield Redevelopment," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 20(2), pages 142-161, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jenpmg:v:46:y:2003:i:2:p:257-269. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CJEP20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.