On Earth Day in April 2007, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced PlaNYC, New York City’s environmental blueprint for management of its infrastructure and growth in the first half of the 21^st century. In that plan, the Mayor identified the importance of cleanup and redevelopment of properties that were abandoned or underutilized due to the presence or perceived presence of contamination. Given the scarcity of available land and the expected influx of nearly one million new residents by 2030, these properties, commonly known as brownfields, must play an important role in the city’s future redevelopment needs. Existing New York State environmental remediation programs, like the Brownfield Cleanup Program, are intended to bring brownfield sites into productive reuse and have proven effective in enabling cleanup of contaminated properties. An important conclusion of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC was that the city needed to act independently to accelerate its brownfield cleanup and redevelopment goals and prepare the city for its infrastructure needs over the next several decades.

To address this challenge, PlaNYC identified eleven major brownfield initiatives to put New York City in an appropriate position to achieve these goals. One of these initiatives, the creation of a new Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation (OER) to oversee the city’s brownfield programs has been accomplished. A second initiative is the creation of a new voluntary brownfield cleanup program in New York City to be administered by OER in cooperation with the New York City Department of Health. That program, called the New York City Local Brownfield Cleanup Program, will be introduced soon.