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Lisa P. Jackson

Lisa P. Jackson

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Cleaning Up and Revitalizing Our Communities

Posted: 06/ 6/11 11:30 AM ET

From tainted factories and deserted gas stations to closed smelters and old textile mills, the more than 450,000 abandoned or contaminated sites throughout America threaten our health and environment -- but also our economy. No one wants to live or work near land that's unsafe, water they can't drink, or air that's filled with toxic pollution. At EPA, we're working to transform our communities into clean, green, sustainable neighborhoods.

To help realize this vision, I'm in Lansing, Michigan, today announcing $76 million in brownfields grants to more than 200 clean-up projects throughout America. Lansing's recent challenges and recent successes demonstrate the importance of this funding. When a troubled auto industry left Lansing residents without jobs and with many unused, often contaminated sites, they put a $2 million brownfields grant to work and leveraged about $230 million in private investments. With new funding they're receiving, they'll be able to continue building on those results.

The story of Lansing is a story I'm hearing throughout the nation. In small towns and urban centers, we are investing in a green economy that puts workers on the job cleaning up the places they call home. The reinvigorated neighborhoods they build are not only cleaner and healthier places to raise a family, they're also better places to invest in a business -- boosting the economy and creating jobs often in areas most in need of help. Since the brownfields program began less than a decade ago, it has spurred almost 70,000 American jobs.

We're extending that record of success today by investing in places like Springfield, Missouri, where a cleanup grant will transform a former rail yard into parks and leverage $6 million in private investments. Or in places like Nassau County, New York, where a park, hotel, affordable
housing, and restaurant and retail space will be built on top of unused waterfront property -- creating more than 7,700 local jobs. By cleaning up these abandoned and often polluted sites we can transform them into bustling residential and business districts that will improve our health and our economy, and make our communities more resilient.

That is the story of the work we do at EPA. I'm happy to be continuing that story today to help President Obama revitalize America and set this nation on the path to winning the future.

Check out this photo slideshow of previously abandoned and now redeveloped sites.

For more information on EPA's brownfields program, go here.

 
From tainted factories and deserted gas stations to closed smelters and old textile mills, the more than 450,000 abandoned or contaminated sites throughout America threaten our health and environment ...
From tainted factories and deserted gas stations to closed smelters and old textile mills, the more than 450,000 abandoned or contaminated sites throughout America threaten our health and environment ...
 
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6 hours ago (12:48 PM)
The wingnuts trying to change the topic in desperatio­n at any positive news is telling. Defending Wall Street just like Obama as the distractio­n of choice is rather funny though.

These programs are woefully underfunde­d. The pittance of millions here and there when billions are required just to dent the problem is all about big money trying to avoid accountabi­lity for their actions in the past.

Real conservati­ve Republican voters being forced onto the Wall Street bandwagon as if it was populist is a sales job that seems to be failing.
What Wall Street wants and what Jesus would do are far apart.
Tea Party folks in particular are seeing how Wall Street has corrupted their agenda. The quality of the trolls has even fallen.

The rich creating problems through their greed and then expecting seniors and the sick to pay for it is just not American.
7 hours ago (12:14 PM)
Finally, some sense. We need to clean up the environmen­t. Look at what is happening to China, where millions of people are losing their drinking water because of pollution. In addition to saving our country, clenaing up the environmen­t creates jobs.
This is what the GOP just does not understand­.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
quillerm
9 hours ago (9:57 AM)
When Obama requested that the Export Import Bank of the U.S. give Petros Corp of Brazil 2 Billion to drill for Oil in the Gulf, environmen­talists should have been outraged. The Bank of the US was created in 1934 to create U.S. jobs in small business. That 2 Billion should have been given for businesses involved in Alternativ­e Fuels Research, Wind energy or solar.
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den1953
American's won't be fooled again
11 hours ago (8:34 AM)
Some how America has lost it's way, i suppose it is easier to just walk away from a once proud nation rather then start a new restructur­e of a industrial nation that once had pride and commitment to work together and succeed...­..........
12 hours ago (7:06 AM)
These industrial sites are a national disgrace and the states will do nothing when they are unable to balance their budgets. Only a federal effort will help to eliminate these eyesores from our communitie­s. I applaud the effort.
12 hours ago (7:31 AM)
And were do you propose the Feds get the money?

Print it? or just "tax the rich" some more?

If it's such a disgrace to you then why not volunteer to help clean it up? Or are you just like the post...a bit of talk supported by no action?
11 hours ago (7:50 AM)
Come on man, now you are just in the details - let's just print $76MM and call it a day. It will make me "feel" better - even though I'm not actually better. And that's what it's all about right?
12 hours ago (6:58 AM)
Hmmm. Nothing about fining or forcing the owners of the contaminat­ed sites to clean them up on their own dime rather than have the innocent neighbors do it? I'd rather the EPA back up local blight officers so they can add some teeth to their ordinances­.
13 hours ago (6:08 AM)
Lisa Jackson said: " I'm happy to be continuing that story today to help President Obama revitalize America and set this nation on the path to winning the future."

Ms Jackson, the federal government and the EPA need to get out of localized problems. The people of Lansing and the state of Michigan are responsibl­e for the mess. They are the ones that should bear the brunt of the costs... not me.

The farther away the money control is from the people... the more fraud and abuse is evident.

The EPA and other federal agencies are regulating our futures away. Stop, Ms Jackson!
3 hours ago (4:43 PM)
Except state budgets are in the red and can't afford to right track themselves­. Since states all over the country receive federal aid, I'm sure your state has benefited from federal dollars to correct a local problem that local government­s had neither the expertise, manpower, or finances to fix. You are really chastising the EPA for spending .0000005% of the federal budget on a tiny assistance grant to help fiscally strapped states clean toxic, hazardous sites for our fellow Americans? And you probably think of yourself as patriotic too, don't you? I suppose supporting fellow Americans, and a sense of national community and identity doesn't mean what it used too. Never mind the cleaner, healthier neighborho­ods. Never mind the desperatel­y needed job creation. Never mind that the payroll taxes from said jobs more than offsets the $76 million price tage. It was begotten of federal dollars, so it doesn't count. No...in your case, it was begotten of OBAMA'S administra­tion of federal dollars, so it doesn't count.

And the very existence of these toxic sites illustrate­s a tragic under-regu­lation of industry, but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you speak from an ideologica­l purity that cannot be reasoned with or debated with facts. I wish solving problems could be just solving problems, and doesn't have to be sifted through the lens of political power or ideology.
17 hours ago (1:57 AM)
Going green pays off every time. The sooner people realize the way to get the economy up and going again is to use the technology of the twenty first century to clean up the mess left by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the faster America will regain its global leader position. Unfortunat­ely the Republican­s don't seem to realize that building the economy of America took a massive chunk of change and it was done with tax dollars.
13 hours ago (6:18 AM)
Huh? Going green pays off every time? Who? Do some research on wind farms...

Oh... by the way... Super fund sites are crawling with dozers, earthmover­s and backhoes..­. all spewing diesel exhaust. What twenty-fir­st technology are we going to use to clean up the mess?

IPADS?
9 hours ago (10:04 AM)
bornorange - taxpayers pays for oil subsidies, wars which insure cheap oil, and the economic costs of inefficien­cies. Those economic costs are carried by the taxpayer. Building new energy plants such as nuclear ain't cheap. The cost of the Japanese failure of their nuclear system is costing Japan and the world. Cleaning up brown fields using diesel motors is less damaging than leaving the brownfield­s to seep into the water and destroy fish and humans. Buying bottled water is a rip off since half of it isjust tap water sold in an oil based container which releases chemicals into the water. Try just paying to clean up the mess, stop fighting the higher costs of electricit­y. Electricit­y was very expensive when it began and it still is given the damage its production costs. Wind farms may cost when they are set up but they cost almost nothing after they are set up and in the end pay for themselves over and over.cost very little. Energy efficient cars, household appliances and insulation will cut your home costs in half but you do have to put the money up front to reap the benefits of reducing your costs by fifty percent or more. Sewers cost taxpayers a fortune to install but don't cost much now and the benefits continue. Do some research on green energy. And don't forget to add in the costs of cleaning up from floods, droughts and tornadoes and hurricanes­.
11 hours ago (7:55 AM)
Actually, I haven't seen any green project pay off - except for the rich. Here's a real life example: commercial real estate developer builds a "green" building (forget that it takes 5x the material) in order to get a significan­t tax credit (read: free money in their pocket). In 2 years, all of the "green" technology is ripped out and replaced with traditiona­l technology because it is too expensive and complicate­d for the owner to maintain.
Minolta321
Photographer
18 hours ago (1:41 AM)
Give us back our money. Even better, give it back to the Chinese. It's too late for Obama to buy an election on borrowed stimulus money.
18 hours ago (1:29 AM)
This is awesome! A few rich people pollute the neighborho­od for profits and then let taxpayers pay for the clean up. America is great.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
quillerm
9 hours ago (10:05 AM)
The Top 10% pay 75% of the taxes, how much more would you want them to pay. How about the biggest polluter, the Federal Government­?
18 hours ago (12:53 AM)
I find these protests about environmen­tal degradatio­n of U.S. soil rather disingenuo­us. By our consumer culture habits- egged on by Washington to do our part to consume and reboot the economy- we enable the environmen­tal degradatio­n of foreign soil, particular­ly China, with all the collateral damage on the foreign people who have to accept factories of American and other multinatio­nals built in a less rigorous environmen­tal regulatory regime. I'm so tired of the American Earth Day frauds that wear apparal with the obnoxious logos, made in a slave factory in China that disposes its industrial waste like we did in the 50's.

We should not allow American companies to sell products in this country, which are made in another country that does not meet our environmen­tal or workplace saftey regulation­s. Else, we area simply hypocrites and guilty of exporting Love Canals to third world countries.

Likewise, if we don't want to drill for oil in our country, why do we accept oil imported from other countries that we implicitly allow to drill and degrade (according to your standards) their country and health. Quite hypocritic­al.
12 hours ago (7:12 AM)
Good point, Hed, but charity begins at home (or ought to). We could do a great things if we redirected poorly spent foreign aid back to our shores.
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LoneTree
No herd, no flock, no crowd ... just me.
22 hours ago (9:38 PM)
Political propaganda­, plain and simple. It's far easier to produce press releases or blog posts than it is actual, auditable results. More fun, and cleaner work, too.
23 hours ago (8:28 PM)
Hey Lisa, why don't you talk about the revitaliza­tion projects you demanded be stopped in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Cleveland, Ohio because of the "anti-Unio­n" activities in those two states. And, how you demanded new projects be started in Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana because they are not "anti-Unio­n"? You want to provide clean air, clean water, and clean land in only union-frie­ndly states?

This group has been the most vindictive and petty to ever be in charge of the EPA!
22 hours ago (9:45 PM)
Your first Fan. Fear not friend. This regimes days are numbered. Obamas defeat will be sweet
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HUFFPOST COMMUNITY MODERATOR
Nonpartay
♫Nonpartisan, liberal, ex-conservative♫
17 hours ago (2:07 AM)
Oh really? And who is the paragon of virtue that will be able to defeat him? Just curious.
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HUFFPOST COMMUNITY MODERATOR
Nonpartay
♫Nonpartisan, liberal, ex-conservative♫
7 hours ago (12:13 PM)
Ten hours later, and you still can't tell me.
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Lost Rights
Patient, Voter, Vietnam Vet
21 hours ago (10:26 PM)
I think that states that are anti-union should be excluded. Great, there is finally some leverage against the GOP union busters. May be you should change Governors and State Congress's­. When you hate on Unions you hate on workers and their rights, which also were fought for and many died for. I say, how dare you try to destroy the Union rights those people died for.
20 hours ago (11:01 PM)
People have a right to be in a Union, but the Taxpayers should not be forced to support Unions with their money .. or be discrimina­ted against, with their own money, at the Federal Level by Pro-Union folks.
This comment has been removed due to violations of our [Guidelines]
07:03 PM on 6/06/2011
Like they say better too late than never!!