Connecticut’s industrial past is the foundation of our prosperity, but it has also left a legacy of old factories and brownfields all around our state — many of them in vulnerable communities.
These contaminated sites are held back from redevelopment by a broken regulatory framework, the Transfer Act.
Environmentalists and business leaders have been saying for years that the Transfer Act has got to go. It’s unfair and ineffective, because it singles out certain properties, and ignores many others.
It forces property owners to “prove the negative,” spending dollars hunting for contamination to prove it’s not there — dollars that could be better used to clean up spills when they’re discovered.
And it makes Connecticut an unattractive place to do business, because we are one of only two states in the country with this byzantine system. One study concluded that the Transfer Act, which many people do not even know exists, has deprived our state of 7,000 jobs and $178 million in tax revenue. Only about a quarter of the 4,200 properties that have entered the Transfer Act program since 1985 have been cleaned up.
With the pandemic battering our economy, and a renewed commitment to address environmental inequality, we can’t afford to put off regulatory reform for another day. A legislative proposal under consideration for the special session would immediately streamline the Transfer Act, and authorize its replacement with a release-based system — the system commonly used by almost every state in the country — to regulate cleanups of contamination.
Under a release-based system, the obligation is simple: clean up contamination when you discover it. Rather than singling out certain properties with onerous requirements, the release-based system focuses compliance on spills that pose the greatest risk to the environment, and creates a uniform, predictable set of standards to guide cleanups of low-risk spills without a lot of red tape.
Shifting to a new cleanup framework will require careful drafting of new regulations, developed with input from the stakeholders, practitioners, and community members. The legislation guarantees a smooth transition by ensuring the release-based program will not go into effect — and the Transfer Act will not sunset — until implementing regulations have been approved by the bipartisan Legislative Regulation Review Committee.
Last week, Governor Lamont participated in the grand opening ceremony of the Montgomery Mill apartment complex in Windsor Locks. This transit-oriented development project transformed what was once an abandoned factory into a 160-unit building, 65 of which are designated for low-income residents, walkable to the train station, and adjacent to the Windsor Locks Canal trail.
This is exactly the type of revitalization that Connecticut residents want and deserve, but currently occurs too infrequently, costs too much, and takes too long because of the Transfer Act.
Enacting a release-based framework will be good for our economy and good for our environment because it will harness private investment to transform sites like Montgomery Mill that are awaiting cleanup in Stamford, Waterbury, Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, Norwalk, Meriden, Norwich, New London, and all across our state.
Reforming our cleanup laws will help us emerge from this pandemic with a stronger economy and revitalized communities free from toxic pollution. There’s never been a more urgent time for us to get this done.
Katie Dykes is the commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. David Lehman is commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development.
