Federal and state reforms to incentivize brownfielddevelopments have only enhanced developers’profits on existing projects

Nearly half a million brownfield sites currently exist in the United States, many of which contain hazardous pollution that needs to be cleaned up to ensure the land can be developed safely. With developers often bearing the cost of this clean-up, state and federal government have put into place a number of financial incentives and liability relief to encourage development. Adam Eckerd and Roy L. Heidelberg write that in practice, private developers use these incentives to make profitable redevelopment projects more profitable, not to take on projects that they otherwise would not.