What's a brownfield remediation project?

who's from Racking Up right now? Right? That's that's who That's for? Who's who is you? When you listen to your own podcast next week? I know you you? Yes? Okay, can we get on with this. Let's do this. Chuck, Hey, Josh, what's a brown field? That's so funny? You should ask Chuck. I know what a brownfield is, and it's even the

name of this podcast, so I will tell you as follows. Basically, a brown field is UM any abandoned industrial site, UM, A old dry cleaner's, an old gas station, any place where there's a potential for a local environmental contamination, but

which necessarily proven to have contamination. Right, it can just be it can just be, uh, something that looks like it, or someone might suspect, um if there was a bunch of chemicals there at one point in time, um or over the years consistently, somebody could reasonably say, I'll bet that place is contaminated, which is not to be confused with a super fund. Really, you bust the super fund out this early. Let me redack that statement, now, go ahead,

go ahead. Well, super Fun, Absolutely, it's contaminated. It is with serious, serious hazardous waste. Um. And actually I was looking around on the e p AS website because you know that's what I do. And um, there's several super Fun sites slated for cleanup in Georgia, but I came across one that I knew you'd be particularly interested in. Hit me your house, so I'm kidding. Um, there's you know, Robin's Air Force Base in Houston County. I think it's a little north of here. Um, I is Houston County

north of here? Okay, Well, anyway, Robin's Air Force Base is up there, and um, they have an old sludge pond and in the sixties and seventies, they said, you know what, we've got these old cans of paint, throw them in the sludge pond. We have like all this trash,

throw it in the sludge pod. So they kept throwing stuff in the sludge, old tires, and then finally, once the seventies rolled around and there was such thing as the E p A and Earth Day and all that, the Air Force and covered it up with five ft of loam. What's that It's like sandy silt, like real thick sand. So they made a beach. They just covered it over right, which actually again like yeah, it was a stupid thing to do, um, and now it's a super fun site to clean up all the loam in

addition to everything else. Here's here's where it gets interesting. Why I think you'd be interested in it? And it's just a little sense just kind of crammed in there. They were like, yeah, there's like old chemical waste, there's old material waste, and also there's unexploded ordinance and agent orange. Really and there's agent orange and a sludge pond on Robin's Air Force basis. So this stuff was left over from Vietnam and they just dumped it there probably, yeah, yep.

So yeah, so it's super fun sited a place where there's agent orange under five feet of loam, right, and it's seeping into the groundwater all that. Yeah, But like you said, these have been clearly identified. The government knows about them. They're doing their best to clean it up. Um. Actually, I don't know if that last part is true, but they know about them, and at the very least they're going to the trouble of identifying them. Right. But a

brown feels different. Like you said, it's a it's potentially contaminated, it could be contaminated. It's still a brown field, but it's not so contaminated or the materials that are that have contaminated it are so dangerous that you can't use the site. Again. Well, now, in fact, quite the opposite, they're trying to encourage the use of these sites. Right. And actually, Chuck, what what makes brown feel so interesting

to me? Is there not just like an environmental hazard, they're an economic hazard as well, because usually, like let's say, um, you know we've talked about urban exploration before, right, there's all these old like abandoned industrial sites or something like that. Um, and they're just sitting there there being left or rot their derelict because no one wants to do anything with them.

And the reason why is because there's so much potential liability. Like, let's say you or I got a wild hair and we wanted to invest in a new mixed use development. Sounds good, So we buy some old industrial site kind of on the edge of town. Heck, in the middle of town, right Atlantic Steel here in Atlanta. Yeah, Atlantic Station was a brownfield redevelopment remediation site. Um. So, so we buy this thing. Everything's hunky dory, and um we're

starting to get some business. We've got some ten it's in our buildings. There's people walking their dogs. I see some guy flying a kite. There's a cute little girl with bows in her hair. She looks like she's going to the gap for the first time ever and pretty excited about it. Right. So uh and then bam, out of nowhere, somebody finds out that the groundwater under our site is contaminated old petroleum investors pull out, buddy, you

better hope we have investors soon. Where at this point, Yeah, if if it's all our money sunk into it, we're not only are we getting Um, you know sued, we're gonna lose all of our tenants were in big trouble, right,

which is why people stay away from brownfield sites. But if we remediate brownfield sites, and we'll get into remediation in a second, if we if we remediate brownfield sites, not only do these old, you know, hulking, rotting derelic places get rebuilt, which is bad for urban explorers, but good for everybody else. It actually saves virgin tracts of land, woodland, other areas. It keeps green space out there. We don't have to develop green space exactly because we're reusing land

rather than just abandoning, right. And that's one of the great things about brown field areas is that it's it's it's not, like you said, completely untouched. So what you've got probably in place of some infrastructure. You have waterlines, you have gas lines and stuff like that, any kind of line, any kind ofline, So, uh, that's awesome. It's not as expensive. No, it's not. In theory. You don't have to lay down that new infrastructure. You don't have

to lay the pipe, so to speak. That's exactly right, Chuck. The infrastructure is already their pipes and all, you know, how many brown fields are in the United States estimated? I want to hear it, four hundred and fifty thousand. That's a lot of brown field site, it is. Yeah, that's a lot of real estate it is. And um, what you were saying before that the fact that there's

infrastructure there, there's buildings there. This makes brown field site it's real property, right And well that yeah, it means you get whatever is on the property. The buildings are yours, the mineral rights yours, it's all there for the taking. Okay, So, but if there's so much liability attached, right, how how do you overcome this kind of thing? Well, what do

you mean, like, how do you clean it up? Well? No, I mean like, how do you attract people to brown field sites rather than you know, have them go cut down a bunch of trees and just build on land that they don't have to worry about is contaminated. Well, one way is with incentives, government incentives. And there's a ton of them, aren't they huns dude, Yeah, it's happening

all over the place. Let's hear about them. Well. I went to the news section of Google to find out like the latest breaking news and they were literally a dozen stories on brownfield remediation, like this week, it's definitely picking up all over the place. And this is I should say. Brown field remediation has been like a viable alternative, or at least a government backed alternative, since I think

the early to mid nineties. That's the impression I have you. Yes, Uh, Texas is getting two point two million dollars worth of funds nice to UH to remediate some of these brownfield from the Feds. Baal the more is has potentially more than one thousand contaminated properties. I can believe that. I went to Baltimore recently and I Hey, Baltimore, shouts out, but I can believe it. Okay, we love you, but boy,

it's just like one big brownfield. And actually they have this place remember Buckhead, And sort of I wasn't one big Buckhead guy, but yeah, they have a place there that is Buckhead. It's like a time machine. It's called the power Station Live and it looks like a remediated brownfield site. And it's crazy. It's like everybody just finished watching the most recent episode of France. It's a Thursday

night and now they're going out. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, So, getting back to the different projects, Maine is getting about six point one million bucks. I don't know much about mains brownfield situation. Well it's probably nicer looking, I would guess, but six point one million that's a lot of money considering Baltimore is only getting about four hundred thousand dollars. You know, that's the that's the problem with the allow one a half trillion dollars. Six million dollars seems like

peanuts these days, it does, you know. Yeah, uh so Georgia, Actually it's happening right here to Governor Perdue has signed a bill which UM is going to help clean up six hundred polluted sits here in our own states. That's awesome. Yeah. I got a friend that works in hazardous waste clean up really. Yeah. He worked at Atlantic Station and when there's like a train derailment and spilled hazardous chemicals, he's

he's manages the site. A train derail to my neighborhood once when I was younger, but it just spilled grain. Well he practiced, well, I don't know, they usually kind of clean up any kind of derailment. Okay, Yeah, cool stuff though, Yeah, that is very cool. So, yeah, like you were saying, there's a bunch of incentive programs. You're just talking about the FEDS doling out money. Big time.

States stole out money too. And one of the ways that they do it that's almost specifically for remediation projects and and reuse projects is a text increment financing. Have you heard about this? Yeah, go ahead, Okay. So basically what the government does is, let's say it's a local or state government. Um, they say, you know what, if you remediate the site and you turn it into a big mixed use development, all the area around it, if

it's successful, is going to start attracting businesses. The real estate values around this area are going to go up. If the real estate values go up and all these businesses and condos and all that stuff goes out to um, we're going to start as a government, we're gonna start making more money off of it's gonna increase our tax base. So we're going to help fund your brown field remediation and reuse project by giving you money based on what

we think we can make in the future. Because you're raising the tax value of the real estate in the area. It's a very cool idea. Well, and also they also give tax breaks UH to people that are doing this right sure for the cost of the cleanup, and they're they're practically giving I think we should look into getting a brown field together. Seriously, we can build that gap. We can if we you know, we need some dough So yeah, not a bad idea. So Chuck, how do

you remediate a brownfield? Well, the first thing you gotta do, my friend, is go out to the site, conduct an assessment from from some soil samples, look at what you're you know, get those tested, see what you're looking at, seeing just how contaminated it is, and um confirm what's there what's not there. And the e p A UH says that nearly one third of these sites are contamination free. So that's awesome. If you get lucky and picked the

right site, your your gold and UM. There is a huge process involved, and there's actually a huge I guess sub construction industry probably related very closely to the demolition industry UM that is engaged in remediating sites. And it is huge, massive work depending on how, if if the area is contaminated and what the pollutant is. Right, because do you remember when we did our webcast and were I think it was last week or whatever we were

talking about now is this week? Everything's blending together these days. Um, we were talking about, um, the lost nuclear bombs, Yes, missing bomb, and we're saying in Florence, South Carolina. There's a sizeable chunk of Florence, South Carolina that's now in Savannah. What they did was remediate that site, right because the bomb exploded, the T and T exploded, not the actual nuclear part of it, thank goodness, but it was still spewed contaminated metal and stuff all over the place, so

they scooped it up and shipped it to Savannah. That's exactly right. Um. So removing soil, contaminated soil, just actually physically getting it out of there and storing it in a safe place. That's remediation. UM. A lot of times the water is tainted, so you have to remediate that. And actually there's some pretty cool bacteria out there that

actually eat petroleum and converted into like harmless compounds. That's awesome. Yeah. Um, So there's all sorts of water treatment UM equipment that you run it through and like this bacteria just eats the stuff and spits green water out the other end, you can plant vegetation. Certain vegetation will suck out the chemicals from the ground. Trees actually, especially a lot of invasive species of trees planted in a in a brown field area will just suck it up and then you

just remove the trees. Right, And they did say they mentioned that covering it up can work to which was what you're talking about the loan, but clearly not. You can't cover up everything, you know, right, it depends on what it is. And also, UM, the the the E p A is starting to really kind of encourage green brownfield remediation. Not your mind, that's actually yeah, that's totally different. Green brown field remediation is basically remediation practices that we're

already using. But say throwing um some windmills on the site to power the equipment you're using, you know, like the the equipment that that UM that remediates the water or decontaminates the water uses up a lot of energy. Why not power with windmill or solar or something like that. UM, trying to use alternative fuels on the heavy machinery that you're removing the top soil with stuff like that. So there's a there's a lot going on, and I gotta

tell you where it was six billion people. Agriculture has a carrying capacity of ten billion people. We're coming up on that. I think some some predictions. Land is important, it's very important. We we need to start reusing it rather than just you know, we are just such a wasteful consumer, disposable society species even yeah, like, oh, that's an old gas station, Let's build a new one across street.

Just let that one sit there. Yeah, And actually I used to work in a town in a county down south of here, and the mayor's brother owned a gas station and he sold it to the city. Well it turned out that the city, uh found out that there was a h an underground storage tank for the gas that had leaked and the the soil was contaminated, and that was that. Nothing ever came of it. Yeah, there's quite a few. I've seen some abandoned gas stations around

the Decatur. They've been there for years, like Kadzus swamped and yeah, because no what he can do anything. Well, hopefully you know this this is changing, or I shouldn't say no one can do anything with it. That kind of contradicts our entire podcast. Right, let me say people are afraid that they're not gonna be able to do anything with that, right, But there's a lot of incentives, a lot of tax breaks, and a lot of money being told out. So if you're a developer, man, I say,

get on it. Yeah, I think we should get on it too, right after Chuck, since we have nothing to plug listener mail? Right, are we? There? Is that your setup? That was it? Beautiful listener mail time? Josh Today, I'm just gonna call this, uh, scary dreams of an impressionable fifteen year old girl. Awesome fan man. So Shelby, who says she's an impressionable fifteen year old girl wrote us. She says, guys, you have scared me out of my mind. I had an extremely vivid nightmare last night, and I

had way too much in common with your podcast. I was a victim of a second holocaust in her dream, just her. I think you have to have more than one person for a holocaust. We'll give her break. She's fifteen. The Disney Corporation was behind it, but I don't know what their goal was and killing millions of people anyway. They started mass producing propaganda films and we're aiming to rule the world and established Disneyism as a mandatory global religion.

So I might say that's happening for real. I was in a very large movie theater with one such film being played, and at the end, a Disney rep announced that the entire audience was going to die. The rest of my dream consisted of me dodging bullets being fired at me by various mascots inside of and doing forced labor making parts for the Disneyland trains, which brought new prisoners from the parking lot, and working on the Disneyland Railroad.

Savage beatings abounded. Awesome, This is so cool. All prisoners had to be stamped on the forehead with one of those re entry stamps, like they that smell like lemons, you know, like the amusement park. My number was D three one seven four nine. I can't believe she remembers on this well, the gates of the entrance of the park read work makes you the Happiest person on Earth, and the statue of Alt Disney standing next to Mickey Man else was replaced with one of Mickey Mouse and Hitler.

I can't believe this girl's fifteen, poor thing at the end the park camp was liberated, but I don't know by who or who. But that's not the point. The point is that I spontaneously had this nightmare with all of these details similar to your podcast before even in the title of it. That really creeps me out. I'll keep listening anyway. So what was your name again? Shelby? Shelby, you have one of the more fertile imaginations I've ever encountered.

Camp I left beautiful. I'm sorry you were terrified, but you're gonna go places right now. At the Disney Corporation, here's just they're thinking, we need to find the Shelbys here. To us, it's like Italy here it is. So if you want to reveal your you know, innermost thoughts and fears, or you wanna tell us what you think about the Disney Company, or just say hi, you can send us an email to Stuff podcast and how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

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