WASHINTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) today announced that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously passed the Brownfields Utilization, Investment, and Local Development (BUILD) Act, bipartisan legislation he cosponsored that would strengthen the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Brownfields Program. The Brownfields Program assists states and local communities through grants and technical assistance as they assess, safely clean up, and reuse properties that contain a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant for economic development projects. 

“The BUILD Act is critical to supporting economic development projects and I am pleased the Environment and Public Works Committee has come together to report it out of committee,” Senator King said. “The Brownfields Program has supported communities throughout Maine – particularly in rural parts of our state – in their efforts to grow the local economy and redevelop old assets into exciting new initiatives and business ventures. By strengthening and improving this program we are encouraging job growth and innovation and extending its reach to rural communities throughout our state and country. I look forward to this bipartisan legislation’s consideration before the Senate.”

The BUILD Act aims to improve the Brownfields Program by providing funding for technical assistance grants to small communities and rural areas, expand the scope of eligible grant recipients to include non-profit community groups, and authorize funding for multi-purpose grants to tackle more complex sites.

Since 1994, Maine has received more than $72 million through the Brownfields Program, which has been highly successful in cleaning up contaminated properties for redevelopment, including Eastern Fine Paper in Brewer, American Tissue in Augusta, Maine Street Station in Brunswick, and Old Howland Tannery in Howland.

The January assessment from the Economic Development Assessment Team (EDAT) – originally requested in March 2016 by Senators Collins and King – highlighted the importance of the Brownfields Program and its potential to leverage federal resources to redevelop former industrial sites, support the viability of impacted mill communities and help to grow Maine’s rural economy. That same month, Eastern Maine Development Corporation was awarded $200,000 through the program to support a development and implementation strategy in Bucksport for the former Verso Paper Mill project area.

A 2017 study published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists found that residential properties values increased up to 15.2 percent once surrounding brownfields were assessed or cleaned up.

More specifically, the BUILD Act would:

• Authorizes up to $7,500 in technical assistance grants to eligible entities in small communities, Indian tribes, rural areas, and disadvantaged areas.
• Expands the eligibility for Brownfields grants for nonprofit organizations to include certain nonprofit organizations, limited liability corporations, limited partnerships, and community development entities.
• Increases the funding limit for remediation grants to $500,000 for each site, with some exceptions for higher funding, and authorizes multi-purpose grants up to $950,000, which provide greater certainty for long-term project financing.  
• Allows certain government entities that do not qualify as a bona fide prospective purchaser to be eligible to receive grants so long as the government entity did not cause or contribute to a release or threatened release of a hazardous substance at the property.
• Allows eligible entities to use up to 8 percent of their Brownfields grant funding for administrative costs.
• Directs EPA in providing grants to give consideration to brownfield sites located adjacent to federally designated floodplains.
• Requires EPA to establish a program to provide grants of up to $500,000 to eligible entities and to capitalize a revolving loan fund to locate clean energy projects at Brownfields sites.
• Reauthorizes the Brownfield program at the same authorized funding level ($250 million per year) through fiscal year 2018.

Earlier this year, in the wake of the Trump Administration's proposal to slash funding for the EPA, Senator King signed a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee urging them to fully fund the Brownfields Program for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 budget.

The bipartisan legislation was introduced earlier this year by Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and has also been cosponsored by Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Thomas Carper (D-Del.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

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