June 2, 2009 • 18 mins
The EPA defines a brownfield as land that is abandoned because redevelopment is complicated by possible environmental contamination. Tune in as Chuck and Josh examine the process of redeveloping a brownfield in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. Guess who's with me? And I'm Chuck Bryant.
(00:21):
That's right and weird this stuff you should know? Team
that's right, the that lumpy finger NAILI Harry tep stuff
you should know Team We're a Tara Tomah. I know
you hate that though, just just consist of the same
things that I'm saying it for a one listener that
who's from Racking Up right now? Right? That's that's who
(00:42):
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,
(01:07):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:50):
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
(02:10):
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,
(02:31):
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
(02:53):
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.
(03:19):
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,
(03:41):
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
(04:02):
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,
(04:24):
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
(04:45):
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
(05:06):
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,
(05:26):
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
(05:50):
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
(06:11):
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.
(06:32):
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
(06:53):
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
(07:15):
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
(07:38):
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
(07:59):
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
(08:21):
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,
(08:42):
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
(09:04):
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
(09:26):
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
(09:47):
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
(10:10):
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
(10:31):
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
(10:52):
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,
(11:13):
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
(11:36):
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
(11:56):
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
(12:17):
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
(12:38):
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
(12:59):
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
(13:20):
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
(13:44):
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
(14:05):
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
(14:27):
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
(14:50):
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,
(15:12):
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
(15:35):
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
(15:55):
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
(16:16):
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.
(16:38):
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
(16:59):
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
(17:21):
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,
(17:45):
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.
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(18:06):
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
Com home page. Brought to you by the Reinvented two
thousand twelve Camri. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. Guess who's with me? And I'm Chuck Bryant.
(00:21):
That's right and weird this stuff you should know? Team
that's right, the that lumpy finger NAILI Harry tep stuff
you should know Team We're a Tara Tomah. I know
you hate that though, just just consist of the same
things that I'm saying it for a one listener that
who's from Racking Up right now? Right? That's that's who
(00:42):
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,
(01:07):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:50):
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
(02:10):
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,
(02:31):
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
(02:53):
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.
(03:19):
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,
(03:41):
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
(04:02):
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,
(04:24):
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
(04:45):
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
(05:06):
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,
(05:26):
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
(05:50):
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
(06:11):
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.
(06:32):
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
(06:53):
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
(07:15):
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
(07:38):
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
(07:59):
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
(08:21):
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,
(08:42):
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
(09:04):
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
(09:26):
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
(09:47):
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
(10:10):
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
(10:31):
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
(10:52):
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,
(11:13):
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
(11:36):
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
(11:56):
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
(12:17):
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
(12:38):
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
(12:59):
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
(13:20):
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
(13:44):
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
(14:05):
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
(14:27):
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
(14:50):
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,
(15:12):
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
(15:35):
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
(15:55):
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
(16:16):
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.
(16:38):
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
(16:59):
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
(17:21):
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,
(17:45):
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
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
(18:06):
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
Com home page. Brought to you by the Reinvented two
thousand twelve Camri. It's ready, are you
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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