DEP's Brownfield Redevelopment Program
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Brownfield
Redevelopment Program empowers communities, local governments and other
stakeholders in economic development to collaboratively prevent, assess, clean
up and reuse brownfields – properties which have known or
perceived environmental contamination. Most commonly, brownfields are sites that were once used for
industrial purposes, such as auto repair facilities, factories, gas stations
and dry cleaners, and may be contaminated by the discharge
of dry cleaning solvents, petroleum products, hydraulic fluids or other
hazardous waste.
Based upon economic and regulatory
incentives, the program uses private revenue to clean up and redevelop sites,
create jobs and enhance the local economy while also reducing public health
and environmental hazards. In order for communities to have access to the program's incentives, a local government must first designate a brownfields area by resolution.
Since the program’s inception in 1997, 101 contaminated sites have been cleaned up, approximately 65,800 confirmed and
projected direct and indirect jobs have been
created and $2.7 billion in capital investment is
projected in designated brownfield areas. There are currently 427 designated brownfield areas statewide, and as of June 2017, 295 Brownfield Site Rehabilitation Agreements have been executed. Additionally, in 2016, more than $32 million in projected new capitol investment was attributed to the program.
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