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fact sheet

Fact Sheet: Land Restoration and Brownfields
By Obviously.ca Staff. Posted on 10:58:00 am - Tuesday, October 02, 2007.

What is a brownfield?

  • Brownfields are abandoned, unused, and/or under-utilized land where previous use by industrial and/or commercial properties may have caused environmental contamination; brownfields usually can be used for other purposes after they have been cleaned up.
  • You can find brownfields in old industrial areas of cities, sites of abandoned mines, and rural areas. Business such as and abandoned refineries, former railway yards, old waterfronts, crumbling warehouses, abandoned gas stations, former drycleaners, and other commercial properties where toxic substances may have been used or stored also create brownfields.
  • Left idle and unmanaged, brownfields pose risks to human health and the environment because of the toxic materials left behind.
  • Previously, brownfields had been left unused and abandoned because the cost of cleaning them was too high – these days, because urban growth means land is more valuable, more and more companies are cleaning the land for redevelopment.
  • There may be as many as 30,000 such sites in Canada.
  • Greenfields are the exact opposite of brownfields – greenfields are areas of land which require no clean-up for contamination. These lands tend to be preferred by developers, and the use of greenfields for various projects has contributed to urban sprawl.

What is land restoration?

  • Land restoration (also known as brownfields redevelopment) is when brownfields are “cleaned up” to make them usable for other projects.
  • There are many different ways to clean up brownfields, such as bioremediation (using naturally occurring microbes), in situ oxidation (using oxygen), and phytoremediation (using plants).
  • Brownfields restoration turns abandoned, contaminated lots into useful, safe land, which allows for new development on the land or for a greener environment.
  • Redeveloping a brownfield means eliminating health and safety hazards, which leads to improved air, water, and soil quality. The environmental benefits include increased land preservation, more brownfields sites cleaned and reused, less urban sprawl and increased preservation of open spaces.

What can restored land be used for?

  • Redeveloped brownfields have been used for a wide range of developments, including commercial properties, residential neighbourhoods, and green spaces.

Tags: brownfields, fact sheets, land restoration

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On Thursday the 13th of March, 2008 at 2:47 am, Neha said:

A Request--

Please send me information about Brownfield sites in India.

On Tuesday the 18th of November, 2008 at 11:32 am, Claire said:

I anm looking for a definition of the expression “greenfield processing plant”.  Maybe also examples of greenfield processing plants in the mining sector.

On Sunday the 7th of December, 2008 at 12:07 pm, Ana said:

What is the most cost effective way of removing contaminated soil from Brownfield sites?

  
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Brownfields
By Jane Dorward, Seneca

Ever wonder about that abandoned lot down the street, the one where the gas station used to be?  How about that old dry cleaners?  Or that old factory by the tracks?

When we think about environmental issues, we usually talk about global warming and sustainable development. If we’re aiming to be more sustainable, then we need to make better use of downtown sites and redevelop areas that already have public transportation. Toronto has many areas we call “brownfield sites” – pieces of property that have some degree of contamination. Many of the cool “factory lofts” are brownfield sites in old industrial areas that looked hopeless twenty years ago. There are dozens of small brownfield sites throughout the city, along with large high-profile ones (like the West Don Lands area). If you think about it, much of Toronto’s waterfront is a brownfield site. If we’re going to halt urban sprawl, we’ve got to clean up land that’s contaminated with heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Other cities around the Great Lakes have large areas of abandoned industrial land, and it’s vital to future generations that we clean up places where fresh water is in good supply.

Before you start pulling out your hair, and losing sleep over the Love Canal [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal] in your neighbourhood, there is good news. Site contamination can be treated, and new technology is constantly developing to deal with the mistakes of the past. There are over 6,000 companies in Canada alone that work on environmental contamination. Unlike the old days, it’s not just dig and dump, either. Some contaminated soil is excavated and taken off site for disposal, but there are many different treatments available, depending on the extent of the damage and the intended use of the property.

In some cases, the contamination is localized and it’s better to “cap” it than disturb it in an attempt to remove it. In large areas, treatment is done over a longer period of time. This can involve the use of plants – a process called phytoremediation. Grasses and certain types of fast-growing trees will pull heavy metals and even PAHs into their roots.  The plants can later be harvested and taken off-site for disposal. Recently in California, soil contaminated with chromium was injected with cheese whey and molasses, which initiates a process that converts hazardous hexavalent chromium Cr (VI) into its trivalent form, Cr (III) which is less easily absorbed by the body, and far less toxic. Heavy metal contamination (particularly arsenic and lead) is removed by a soil washing process which leaves recovered metal product suitable for recycling and decontaminated soil that can be returned to the site. This is the process going on at the West Don Lands site.

So, there’s hope for us. The only downside is that there are too few people being trained for the remediation industry. In the past, this was the domain of chemical engineers, but there is a Bachelor of Technology degree in Environmental Restoration offered at Seneca College. This is a co-op program, so students have two paid summer work terms where they can gain first-hand knowledge of the field.

There’s one more aspect to this, which makes the need for education and training even more important. As the North American economy relies less and less on heavy industry, the burden is being shifted to developing nations. We pay little for manufactured goods from China and India, but these countries will pay the price with groundwater and soil contamination. Huge factories and rail lines are becoming even larger brownfields than the ones we have here. Surely we owe these countries the benefit of our skills in environmental restoration.

More Information

aboutREMEDIATION – “Canada’s leading information resource on site remediation and brownfield redevelopment”.

Canadian Brownfields Network – “a national advocacy network for brownfield practitioners and stakeholders who want to effect change regarding brownfields redevelopment in Canada.”

Seneca College offers a Bachelor of Applied Technology in Integrated Environmental Remediation (IER).