During the real estate boom of the first five years of this millennium, developers were looking anywhere and everywhere to build condominiums, townhouses and retail buildings in New Jersey. Real estate was a gold mine in this state as buyers were ubiquitous and willing to pay almost whatever price asked. The term flip became mainstream. Major beneficiaries of the real estate boom were “brownfield” sites. Brownfields are commonly defined as former industrial or commercial properties that are currently vacant or underutilized, and on which there is, or there is suspected to be, a discharge of a contaminant. With the right mix of policy and market conditions, brownfields became a major source of opportunity for developers.
As a result of New Jersey’s leadership role during the Industrial Revolution in the early 1900s, today we have thousands of properties with varying levels of contamination left behind, many of which are now brownfields. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) estimates that there are approximately 10,000 brownfields in the state. These contaminated sites are drains on the local economy because they generate very limited or no tax revenue. They also drive away business and wealth. The longer the brownfields exist, the longer the local economy and environment suffer.
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