Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ)

The TCEQ’s Voluntary Clean up Program (VCP) provides administrative, technical, and legal incentives to encourage the cleanup of contaminated sites in Texas. All non-responsible parties, including future lenders and landowners, receive protection from liability to the state of Texas for cleanup of sites under the VCP. See Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Voluntary Clean up Program, http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/remediation/vcp/vcp.html (last visited 7/25/07)

City of Houston (link) — “The Houston Brownfields Assessment Pilot is leading the nation in brownfields reuse, playing a key role in the assessment, cleanup, and redevelopment of more than 986 acres of brownfields and leveraging more than $500 million in redevelopment funding. The Houston Pilot focuses on the inner-city and downtown areas that were neglected as the city experienced an economic boom in the 1970s and 1980s that pulled businesses and residents out of the urban core to the expanding development of outlying greenfields. Abandoned and idle properties downtown were left with the perception of environmental contamination that for years stymied redevelopment. The efforts of the City of Houston’s Brownfields Redevelopment Program have led to these inner-city brownfields being assessed, cleaned up, and redeveloped for such uses as a major league baseball park, a 450-acre golf course, a performing arts center, an aquarium and entertainment complex, and nearly 1,000 new housing units. The city’s Brownfields Redevelopment Program has been aided by funding from EPA with a $200,000 Brownfields Assessment grant and $600,000 in Showcase Community awards.”

Railroad Commission of Texas — “The Texas Railroad Commission awarded funding for its first Targeted Brownfields Assessment Feb. 4 to evaluate an abandoned 4.5-acre crude oil gathering facility along Texas Highway 35 in Fulton, located in Aransas County.”