EPA Official Discusses Brownfield Redevelopment Direction Ann Carroll, a senior policy analyst with the Environmental Protection Agency (and soon-to-be doctoral student here at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), recently gave students, faculty and staff an inside look into her work at the EPA’s Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization. In the mid-1990s, EPA first established the brownfields program as a way to clean up and redevelop properties that may be contaminated by pollutants or hazardous substances. Carroll, who has 25 years of experience working on environmental health issues, including 15 years at the EPA, has spent the last several years exploring the connections between brownfields and public health. In addition to obvious pollution and contamination concerns, brownfields also raise concerns relating to environmental justice and sustainable land use. Carroll said that getting stakeholders to realize these far-reaching public health implications has not always been easy, even among EPA colleagues. Urban agriculture is one area that Carroll said needs additional risk assessment. She said she has been working to make urban agriculture activists aware of potential contamination concerns, and also let them know that they are eligible for EPA’s brownfields funding to help in their efforts. Carroll also mentioned the regulatory issues that EPA has been working on to encourage redevelopment in cities. Regulations requiring owners of contaminated properties to clean up the site led to a lot of abandoned properties. Insurance companies, property developers and other stakeholders have come together to ask for EPA’s help in dealing with the liabilities associated with brownfields. Carroll said that this collaboration occurred around the same time as the smart growth movement, which is important to economic growth in cities and more environmentally-friendly land usage. “The smart growth answer is that you have to clean up the brownfields,” Carroll said. “That liability piece is really critical. We are not just an environmental program. We are also really working on the legal side of the redevelopment.” The Center for a Livable Future cosponsored the event with the Environmental Health Sciences Student Organization. | 
