Brownfield Grants as a Tool for Disaster Planning and Recovery

When disaster strikes, what happens next? Can a community anticipate rebuilding before the next one?

After natural disasters come a stream of articles, opinion pieces and forums on how communities should rebuild. Strategies to protect from future disasters or address other issues such as housing shortages and vulnerable infrastructure often contradict residents’ need for fast and streamlined rebuilding that allows them to get back into their homes and businesses sooner rather than later. However, these issues do not need to be at odds. Through proactive planning, a community can ensure recovery and rebuilding planning balances sustainability, resilience and speed of recovery.

EPA Brownfield grants cover a variety of activities that can help states and local governments, Tribes, and nonprofits with disaster recovery planning and reuse. Moreover, it is not too late for communities that have experienced disaster to plan for a resilient and vibrant future in the wake of tragedy with the support of brownfield funding. While brownfield grants cannot cover all costs related to these tasks and you will need to synchronize the grant application and award timeline to ensure it fits your needs and project timing, it is an important grant to consider as you stack and sequence funding for redevelopment projects.

The following is a description of how to incorporate pre- and post-disaster recovery activities into a typical brownfield grant work plan:

1. Brownfield Inventory: the community identifies sites with real or perceived contamination, that are underutilized, and/or inconsistent with community plans, and other local goals. This can also include properties that are for sale, where specific reuse, including community amenities, has been proposed. An inventory helps communities prioritize sites for environmental site assessments, cleanup and other reuse studies. If these sites are impacted by disaster, their dangers will be known ahead of time for more effective recovery.
2. Community Outreach: this can involve creating working or advisory committees, and coordinating with community stakeholders and subject matter experts in implementing the grant and specific projects. During this step sites of concern, community needs, and community risks can all be discussed to develop a cohesive vision. This way, if disaster strikes everyone is already on the same page for community recovery.
3. Reuse and Cleanup Planning: communities reference municipal, regional or state plans to address land use and zoning, economic development, resiliency and sustainability, and housing plans, and other efforts on which to base end-uses on prioritized sites. Where no reuse plan exists, communities formulate plans or actions that align with the community’s broad goals and policies. Brownfield sites can be reused to protect the community from future disasters. For example: sites redeveloped as open space can serve as a vegetated fire break, or stormwater catchment to prevent flooding.
4. Environmental Site Assessments and/or Remediation: This involves sampling, testing and any necessary remediation. Remediated sites will be of less concern post-disaster, and you can allocate extra recovery efforts to sites that have not yet been remediated.
5. Budget and Leveraging Funds: Brownfields activities and funding are early steps that help build consensus, and create and crystalize plans that generate partnerships, which are critical to obtaining grants and financing for reuse needs, such as costs for construction and infrastructure. The most common funds that are leveraged for brownfields reuse projects are for: affordable housing, parks, trails, conservation and open space, economic development and infrastructure. By incorporating measures such as fire-resilient building materials or flood water diversions, brownfield projects can improve disaster preparedness while addressing other concerns.

Example: Gardnerville Nevada used brownfield funds to remove three underground storage tanks and soil contaminated with petroleum from a part of town with frequent flooding issues. The City installed a 13,000 cf stormwater reservoir in the resulting void, providing flood protection to neighboring properties while reducing project costs.

Brownfields activities are voluntary – and typically brownfields grants have a steady, measured pace. In some instances, there is some urgency when there is a concern that formerly industrial and commercial land impact public and environmental health. Conversely, after disaster response, when the community is in recovery, there is urgency because residents are immediately affected. The pressure to solve problems immediately will need to be factored into a brownfield grant process. For these reasons, brownfield grants are best utilized before disaster strikes. Incorporating disaster recovery planning into brownfield grants can heighten awareness of disaster risks within the community, mitigate risks before disaster strikes, and identify community needs to ensure those needs can be addressed during recovery.

Vernonia, Oregon during 2007 flood

Not all communities have the luxury of completing recovery planning before recovery is needed. In a post-disaster scenario, brownfield grants can still be utilized as one of many assistance tools. Reinvention is common among communities that have received brownfields grants, and several disaster affected communities have used EPA brownfields grants toward disaster recovery: Vernonia, Oregon relocated some facilities from the floodplain and dozens of sites were assessed and cleaned up in New Orleans post-Katrina. Existing grantees may also modify work plans to adapt to new needs post-disaster.

The Sierra Institute for Community and Environment utilized brownfield grants for the development of a wood utilization campus to transform trees removed for fire reduction efforts into energy and heating. When the Dixie Fire burned the region prior to the campus’ opening, the Sierra Institute worked with grant-issuing agencies to reallocate funds to develop a sawmill. This sawmill now transforms burned and hazard trees into lumber for rebuilding. The site also took in foundations from destroyed structures as inert fill, reducing hauling and material costs for the community and nonprofit alike.

Let’s look at the same work plan and how it could be used to address recovery post-disaster:

1. Community outreach. Unlike a traditional brownfield project, where planning, economic development, housing and public health interests are involved, disaster recovery will be an “all hands on deck” effort, where every sector of the community and levels of government will be involved. This will also involve land owners and tenants. Recovery community involvement will have a much more frequency, taxing both the grantee and their stakeholders. In addition, in a post-disaster scenario, emotions and urgency will make managing discussions more challenging. Disaster-related brownfields grants may:
   1. Create more focus groups to address planning and recovery
   2. Incorporate conflict resolution and mediation to resolve issues
   3. Coordinate grant activities and adoption of plans with local, regional and state schedules for planning and budgeting
2. Brownfield Inventory: In disaster recovery, an inventory can combine brownfield criteria with other factors, including properties that will continue to be threatened by natural disaster even if rebuilt. An inventory can also include properties where the owner is willing to cooperate in community solutions
3. Reuse and Cleanup Planning: While initial disaster response by FEMA, fire, police, state environmental agencies and others is underway, the community can plan for the recovery and rebuilding to follow. Reuse plans can be conceptual or prescriptive. A post-disaster grant will likely have a compressed schedule to address victims’ needs.
   1. Disasters are often exacerbated by the built environment. Reuse planning can incorporate the identification of, and solutions to, a community’s vulnerability to natural disasters and extreme weather events. These could include susceptibility to flooding, wildfires, landslides and erosion, rising seas and groundwater levels, or inadequate infrastructure such as narrow roads, and vulnerable utility networks, and access to emergency and recovery assistance. This helps bridge emergency response to recovery and reuse.
   2. Disasters can also be seen as an opportunity to solve some of the regions’ other challenges such as housing shortages, traffic, land use conflicts, cost and availability of insurance, and other urban planning issues.
4. Environmental Site Assessment and/or Remediation: Immediately following a disaster, the local, state or federal agencies have to complete response actions, such as site clearance in preparation for recovery. Subsequent assessment and remediation will be the responsibility of the property owner.
   1. The grantee may focus their efforts in sites that have a community serving purpose, such as a park, green infrastructure, assemblage of sites for more homes.
   2. Individual private property owners will be responsible for their recovery costs if the sole purpose of assessment or remediation is to restore property to a pre-disaster state. When a private property owner is open to discussion on how their property can be used toward common community interests, e.g., sell for affordable housing, open space, green infrastructure, the grantee would have justification to use grants funds for assessment and/or cleanup. These include strategies identified in item 2 above.
5. Budget and Leveraging Funds: In disaster recovery, each property owner may face a different financial situation for recovery that includes different mixes of: land-secured financing, insurance proceeds, FEMA and other disaster assistance. Possible use-rights, which are transferable in some states, play a greater role as well.
   1. The grantee may apply for a revolving loan fund grant to lend to private property owners, or to subgrant to eligible entities with eligible projects.
   2. The grantee can facilitate layering grants, financing and insurance proceeds to pay for individual recovery and community rebuilding.
   3. The grantee can establish special districts, such as tax increment or community facilities districts, to pay for remediation, infrastructure, community facilities, parks and other facilities authorized under their state laws.
   4. Transfer of development rights, where available, can play a role in property transactions and gap funding.

As of this writing, CCLR still expects the EPA Brownfield MARC (Multipurpose, Assessment, Revolving Loan Fund, and Cleanup) FY26 gran cycle to be launched in the late summer or early fall of 2025, and be due approximately sixty days after. The awards will be announced in the spring of 2026.

It is never too early to begin disaster planning and recovery, or to start planning a brownfield grant application. CCLR can help communities strategize for a brownfield grant. This includes identifying your partners, challenges, preparedness and possible work plan and budget needs, and what brownfield grant programs work for you. Reach out to CCLR and staff of the US Environmental Protection Agency to explore the possibilities of how a brownfield grant, or other EPA and state resources, can incorporate both brownfields reuse and disaster recovery. These disasters are lurking, and reuse needs are constant. Don’t let your next disaster be ignoring this advice.