Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative

2000 Winner -- Environmental Protection Agency

Recognizing leadership in addressing environmental challenges has been a consistent goal of the innovations program. In the year 2000, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) won for its Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative. Since it was created in 1995, this initiative has allocated roughly $500 million to leverage a total of $9.6 billion in cleanup funds, resulting in the assessment of more than
10,000 sites and the comprehensive redevelopment of nearly 200 sites that were previously unusable due to contamination.
The success of this program and the recognition it received has resulted in an explosion of brownfield development around
the country. In 2007, 38 states, 5 tribal areas, and 2 territories will receive more than $70 million in direct funds from the EPA's redevelopment program, which will leverage hundreds of millions more in private development funds. According to the EPA's administrator, Stephen Johnson, "Transforming thousands of blighted sites into engines of economic rebirth [will be] one of the greatest environmental success stories of the past decade".