Despite being one of the most densely populated areas in the world, New York City has more than 7,600 acres of underutilized, contaminated land. Known as brownfields, these sites are often located in low-income communities and can threaten public health. In June 2008, Mayor Michael Bloomberg created the Office of Environmental Remediation to transform the city's brownfields into transit-centered communities, parkland and waterfront access points. In this edition of Ecopolitics, we check in with Daniel Walsh, the office's founding director, to see how plans are progressing.

Tell us a bit about yourself and what made you interested in this position.
I formerly served as director of the Superfund and Brownfield Cleanup Program for DEC's New York City office, where I spent more than two decades developing programs to address unique needs for cleanups here in New York City. I have a doctorate in geochemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and have been an adjunct professor at Columbia University-Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory since 1999.

Why is it important to revitalize brownfields? What advantages are there to the community and the city?
Cleaning up all the contaminated land was one of the 10 goals outlined in PlaNYC. In a city where land prices are relatively high and available land is scarce, we need to use the land we have more efficiently. Cleanup and redevelopment of brownfield sites has numerous benefits to New York City communities. First, it provides for needed protection of public health and the local environment. Contamination at brownfield sites has often hindered redevelopment and these properties are commonly vacant or underutilized. From a community perspective, our new cleanup program can eliminate the stigma of contamination and enable conversion of these properties to a new and vibrant reuse. This process, taking our least productive properties and making them our most productive, will help revitalize many city neighborhoods.

You were appointed director of the Office of Environmental Remediation in June. What are your goals for the office?
Creating a new Office of Environmental Remediation, one of the 127 initiatives in PlaNYC, provides a rare opportunity to build a new cleanup program from the ground up. I am pleased to get the opportunity to do it here in New York City. This will be the country's first municipal cleanup program (all existing programs are managed at the state level) and the country's first fully sustainable cleanup program.

" Municipal brownfield management has enormous potential benefits that are difficult to accomplish when administered at higher levels of government."

-Daniel Walsh

The goal for the office is to develop a program that is capable of delivering prompt and high-quality cleanups, and to do so in a way that provides incentives for developers to select brownfield sites and work with the surrounding community. The program will be very predictable and designed to reduce the risk developers face when trying to make projects work on brownfield properties. We will work in close partnership with New York State and with US EPA to achieve our common aim, to clean sites up and bring them into productive reuse.

New York State already has a Brownfield Cleanup Program. Why is it important for New York City to have one as well?

I believe that municipal brownfield management has enormous potential benefits that are difficult to accomplish when administered at higher levels of government. For instance, we will be providing very specific benefits that are directed toward the specific needs of New York City communities, like brownfield worker training programs, local entrepreneurship programs and support for students interested in professional careers in this area. We will also be directly addressing many of the sustainability needs outlined in Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC. New York State has been very supportive of our seminal efforts to build a city brownfield cleanup program. The state has recognized the value of the city's role in providing additional programs and manpower to address our unique needs. We have agreed to work with the state to begin our program under their current statutory authority, and we will seek changes to state legislation in early 2009.

Newsletter Issue

• Ecopolitics Monthly --- April 2007