Who Participates in the Voluntary Cleanup Program: Lessons from Baltimore City

Abstract

If the sheer size of land endowment is an indicator of an economy’s potential, then the United States is fortunate indeed. However, there exist land tracts, in urban and rural areas, which are left unused due to concerns about the presence of potential contamination. The technical jargon for industrial sites which have suffered this fate is ‘brownfield’; it makes a lot of sense to clean up these brownfields and reuse them for industry or other productive activities. However, the liability regime imposed by federal and state hazardous waste programs in the US may actually discourage the purchase and reuse of contaminated or potentially contaminated sites. Recently, policymakers have come up with a plethora of programs to offer incentives for cleanup and reuse of brownfields. Dr. Anna Alberini and graduate student Dennis Guignet examined one such program, the Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP), and analyze the features of the sites which use this program (and the sites which are eligible but do not use it). Additionally, they also look into the redevelopment potential of the above mentioned VCP parcels.