The link below details a plan developed by University of Michigan Environmental Engineering and Remediation students to transform General Motors' Chevy-in-the-Hole brownfield in Flint, Michigan.
http://www.thelandbank.org/...
It's a wonderfully thoughtful, hopeful, green, community-focused vision for what change might look like on the ground - even in, or especially in, a place like Flint.
The problem is that none of the Big Three (nor any owner of a potentially polluted brownfield) is likely to sell such a property, even if there were a buyer or new plan for it. Why? Current laws tie environmental liability to the polluter (as they should) even if the property were to be sold to someone else. That means if GM sells the Chevy-in-the-Hole brownfield to the city of Flint or a private developer, GM is still on the hook for any contamination that may be discovered. So rather than run the risk of being 'found out' and having to foot the bill for the mess they made, they simply refuse to sell. And we're left with huge swaths of unusable, unproductive, unsafe, ugly land. Forever.
I just a wrote to Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and President Obama (via http://www.change.gov) to urge them to consider this as something that needs to be corrected - as part of a potential government assistance package for the auto industry or in some other way. I urge you to do the same - as this is not just a Flint or Michigan or Rust-Belt problem. It is very likely that your state has barren Big Three, or some other corporation's, brownfields sitting as idle eyesores for the exact same reason.
If it is true that we need another "Manhattan Project" to address climate change and energy independence, it would be silly to throw all of our still-viable manufacturing capacity into a landfill, only to start over again from scratch. That doesn't sound very 'green.' It doesn't sound very fiscally responsible.
Democrats like to talk about the idea of recycling and retooling factories for the sustainable manufacturing of wind turbines, electric buses, planes, trains, automobiles, etc. That's great! But why stop there? Can't we repurpose the Big Three's existing brownfields as wind and solar farms? Can't we use these properties as living laboratories and training grounds to explore and put into practice new cleanup techniques? Aren't those 'Green Jobs' too? The students who developed the Chevy In the Hole plan have degrees in Environmental Engineering and Remediation - but if there's no opportunity to put that knowledge to use, because corporations are sitting on their brownfields, that's yet another waste.
If government support for the automotive industry does end up happening, there must be a whole host of demands, conditions, and guarantees for taxpayers, workers, retirees, communities, and the planet.
Here's to putting Brownfield Remediation on that list.