Announcing the call for applications for EPA's Smart Growth Implementation Assistance (SGIA) Program!

The SGIA program focuses on complex or cutting-edge issues, and projects can take about 18 months to complete. These projects explore innovative ideas to overcome barriers that are preventing communities from getting the kind of development they want. Since 2005, the SGIA program has allowed the Office of Sustainable Communities to work with a diverse array of communities from across the country on issues such as stormwater management, code revision, transit-oriented development, affordable housing, infill development, corridor planning, green building, and climate change.

EPA invites applicants to submit proposals under one of these categories (though other ideas are accepted too): 

1. Community Resilience to Disasters and Climate Change

2. Redevelopment for Job Creation

3. The Role of Manufactured and Modular Homes in Sustainable Neighborhood Design

4. Medical and Social Services Facilities Siting

Applications are due on March 1

More information can be found at http://epa.gov/smartgrowth/sgia.htm.

EPA Releases NEW Report on Sustainable Communities

EPA has released a report that offers low-income, minority, tribal, and overburdened communities approaches to shape development that responds to their needs and reflects their values. Creating Equitable, Healthy, and Sustainable Communities: Strategies for Advancing Smart Growth, Environmental Justice, and Equitable Development provides a menu of land use and community design strategies community-based organizations, local and regional decision-makers, developers, and others can use to revitalize their communities:

· Facilitate meaningful community engagement in planning and land use decisions
· Promote public health and a clean and safe environment
· Strengthen existing communities
· Provide housing choices
· Provide transportation options
· Improve access to opportunities and daily necessities
· Preserve and build on the features that make a community distinctive

Case studies highlight seven communities that have used these strategies: Edmonston, MD; Chicago, IL; Spartanburg, SC; New Orleans, LA; Ohkay Owingeh, NM; Boston, MA; and Seattle, WA.

The report was developed jointly by the Office of Sustainable Communities and Office of Environmental Justice.

Read the press release.

Bona Fide Prospective Purchaser Rules

Source: www.brownfieldassociation.org, Horinko
01/22/13

Purchasers and developers of Brownfields property are anxiously awaiting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit's decision in the Superfund case, Ashley II of Charleston, LLC v. PCS Nitrogen, Inc., No. 11-1662(L). The two key questions in this matter concern whether the property purchaser should have done or known more about the pre-existing contamination on the property at issue and also whether the purchaser had a prohibited relationship with the seller as evidenced by an agreement concerning cost recovery by the parties as well as efforts to prevent EPA from taking a cost recovery action at the property.... MORE

Mississippi DEQ Publishes 2012 Brownfield Annual Report