New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Basil Seggos has announced another year of successful environmental cleanups as part of the State’s Brownfield Cleanup Program. In 2020 alone, a total of 48 Certificates of Completion were issued and 94 new sites were accepted to the Brownfield Cleanup Program (BCP), helping to protect public health and the environment across New York State while bolstering local economies through redevelopment.
“New York’s Brownfield Cleanup Program is a powerful tool to advance the restoration and redevelopment of abandoned and underutilized properties in communities across the state and return them to productive use, benefitting local economies and improving quality of life,” Seggos says. “Despite challenges due to COVID-19, 2020 was another successful year for the Brownfield Cleanup Program and I commend DEC’s dedicated professionals working tirelessly to make this program a success.”
DEC provides strict oversight of New York’s BCP, which encourages the voluntary cleanup of brownfields so these sites can be redeveloped. The BCP is an alternative to greenfield development and can help remove some of the barriers to, and provide tax incentives for, the redevelopment of urban brownfields.
For more information on the BCP, visit DEC’s BCP webpage. A list of sites that have been completed in New York can be found at the NYS Open Data website.
