(The Center Square) – Encouragement to clean, redevelop and revitalize hazardous waste sites by designating all Superfund and brownfield areas is in legislation pushed by U.S. House of Representatives members from North Carolina and Texas.
For Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., it’s reintroduction of a bill he and fellow Tarheel Wiley Nickel tried last summer. He’s still got a Democrat alongside, this time Texas’ Jasmine Crockett.
Economic Opportunity for Distressed Communities Act was introduced on Monday, two days after Crockett while in Los Angeles at a Human Rights Campaign dinner called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels.”
If enacted, all Superfund and brownfield areas would be designated Opportunity Zones, a status that would provide investors the ability to defer tax on a capital gain if the gain is invested in a Qualified Opportunity Fund within 180 days of being realized, a release from Edwards says.
Whether Crockett, well-liked within her party, torpedoed Edwards’ bill with her comments will play out soon enough. Abbott was paralyzed in 1984 when a tree fell on him while on a job; he has used a wheelchair since.
“I have heard from numerous constituents who are interested in developing environmentally challenged properties but decided not to because there isn’t enough incentive,” Edwards said. “Due to Superfund and brownfield sites’ contamination, many locations with potential sit unoccupied for years. If cleaned, brownfields and Superfund sites can be redeveloped into new housing or business space, and promoting cleanup and development of these sites will create jobs, business opportunities, and increase property values for Western North Carolina and nationwide.”
Superfund is a colloquial term for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA. It allows the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up sites contaminated with hazardous waste either dumped, left out in the open or otherwise improperly managed. The EPA defines brownfields, albeit with certain legal exclusions and additions, as “real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.”
In the 118th Congress, the effort by Edwards and Nickel never got a vote in the House, dying in the Committee on Ways and Means.
“Communities like mine in Texas’s 30th Congressional District have too often suffered from land pollution and ongoing harm caused by industrial businesses that are no longer in operations in our district,” Crockett said. “While the Environmental Protection Agency has previously been helpful in providing districts with funds to remediate and clean Superfund sites and brownfields so our children can safely play and communities can repurpose and build on the land, we also need to incentivize the private sector if we are truly going to increase the level of improvement of these lands when federal resources do not. I am proud to join my colleague in introducing our bill that takes an all-hands-on-deck approach to cleaning our communities and helping create and build parks, affordable homes, stores, and small businesses.”
